Nightmare Carnival

Or it would have been, had it not been for the Reverend Leroy Taylor Randall and his Pentecostal tent revival already in full swing by the time the circus arrived on the lot. Although the revival consisted of one pathetically small tent with only half a wall around it, it was packed with parishioners, mostly women and old men, waving arms about and hollering in tongues at the top of their lungs. The preacher, dressed head to toe in funereal black, held a Bible over his head while shouting out scripture in a crow-hoarse voice. A gospel choir behind him clapped and sang while every few minutes he would lay a hand on a random forehead praise the Lord and send someone toppling backward Jesus save me to writhe and twitch like mosquito larvae in an overcrowded pond hallelujah!

The canvas men and the riggers laid out the tents and poles while pairs of gandy dancers pounded spikes with synchronized sledgehammers. The canvas boss walked through the lot demarcating where the midway would form, siting locations for the menagerie top, the big top, the sideshow tent, the cookhouse tents, while sledge gangs tried to ignore both the usual crowds of the curious and the sudden appearance of the preacher and his flock singing and clapping and shouting just outside the ticket tents rapidly going up.

“And the Lord said unto these followers of Satan, ye defiled whores of Babylon, I shalt cast out the sinners, I shalt pour down torrents of rain, hailstones, and burning sulfur and they shalt know I am the Lord thy God!”

“Damned Bible thumpers,” Max said darkly as he buttoned Mae into her lobster costume and arranged the seaweed circlet on her head. “Don’t even quote it right.”

She watched the preacher and his mob through a chink in the sideshow booth, uneasy yet fascinated. But despite the preacher’s ranting and dire warnings, the afternoon show had gone off without a hitch, the midway and the tents packed out, the populace of Ashton happy to divide their patronage between two circuses. The midway continued to offer rides and high-priced junk and carnival fare during the break between shows, while North rounded up the elephants to take them to the river for a much needed drink and cooling down.

The smaller elephants were skittish enough being youngsters, North having to nudge them lightly with the ankus to remind them to behave. Madelaine followed them, docile and patient, ignoring the gawking crowd shoving and jostling for a better view. The afternoon had grown hotter, the humidity stifling. Half the circus company had decided on a swim as well to cool off before the evening performance, forming a mini parade down to the water. A few of the acrobats turned cartwheels and flip-flap handsprings, while Max and Mae and Eric followed Madelaine in the small pony cart, well hidden. They’d find a more secluded spot upstream. The crowd would be too fascinated by the elephants drinking, spraying each other, rolling in the river, to notice them. When they weren’t in their costumes and on display, Mae knew, they might as well have been invisible.

The muddy road down to the river was chock-a-block, women in fancy hats wielding umbrellas to shove their way through gangs of workmen in dirty overalls, Negro farm hands elbowing fat shopkeepers and bankers, children riding on their fathers’ shoulders. Everyone had come to gawp and gape and stare, providing as much a sideshow for the circus company as it was for the spectators.

Eric and Max sat in the rear of the pony wagon, mopping their sweating foreheads while Mae peeped through the wooden doors just behind the driver. She saw the mayor and his family, decked out in their Sunday best, the smallest of his boys trying hard to tempt Madelaine with a peanut held straight out in his chubby hand while his sisters recoiled, squealing in real or pretend fright. To the boy’s delight, the elephant obligingly took the peanut from him, the tip of her trunk as nimble as fingers.

She saw the preacher and his band of female parishioners, a black scarecrow surrounded by scrawny white chickens, still brandishing a Bible over his head, shouting hoarsely. “No true Christian can follow Our Lord Jesus Christ and then be found in a circus, that den of iniquity, wicked purveyors of drinking and dancing, gambling and adultery!” White flecks foamed in the corners of his mouth, while the women around him rolled their eyes in ecstasy.

She saw a man step out from among the worshipers, a half-eaten apple in his hand, the smoke from a lit cigar dangling from his mouth making him squint. She saw him tease Madelaine with the apple, waving it just out of her reach, until she stretched out her trunk eagerly, her mouth opening in anticipation. She saw him grin, switch the apple for his cigar, and toss it into the elephant’s mouth. And laugh.