Nightmare Carnival

I stared at their paws whenever I fed them. My head got so heavy when I was near their cage, like all the blood had drained from my neck; I couldn’t have looked any higher. They were tawny on first glance, and dusted with white, but there was a gray underneath that got deeper the longer you looked, like they were pulled tight over some darkness that had no name, like the pads of their paws were made of stone. When they stretched their claws came out, sickles of bone that scraped the bottom of the cage without a sound, just long enough that you shuddered and turned your head.

The meat was always gone when you looked back.

I learned to hand the rabbits to Joseph for cleaning and then make myself scarce until I knew the feeding was over. Otherwise my dreams were filled with talons.

Some of our crew had their eye on becoming an act. Every so often you’d catch Peter and Richard juggling things at each other, or Allan throwing knives into a block of wood. Matthew Brandini would hover around our train car every so often, watching them practice as if they actually had a chance.

(Even early on, I hated how much it got their hopes up. They all had to know it was useless unless Jim Brandini made a round, looking out at someone in particular from under eyebrows as dark and sheltering as the brim of a hat. Matthew could stroke everybody’s egos and think about flashy introductions all he wanted, but Jim was the one who decided what the circus was willing to be responsible for.)

Daisy said once, “If you’re interested, you’ll have to put yourself forward. Matthew suggested you and I pair up as the Two Giant Nymphs of Olympus. I flicked my cig at him. Nearly caught that coat on fire. It might have given the impression you weren’t interested.”

We were coiling rope around our shoulders to drag a wagon full of benches to the tent, looking like a pair of Clydesdale mares in denim trousers and shirtsleeves.

“Haul,” I said, and she grinned.

Joseph could have performed, I thought. He was surefooted and pleasant to look at, and anything else you needed Matthew Brandini could probably teach you.

I told Joseph so, one day when he was swinging by his knees from the rigging, sliding a joint into place. He laughed and said, “Can’t see under those lights. Pass up the bigger wrench, would you?”

I didn’t think he would have wanted to. For no reason I could name, I liked that I was right. I watched him fasten the support, his fingers living creatures against the sea blue of the tent.

He was kind, and Daisy was kind, which was more than I’d expected — he taught me how to play the crew’s quick-draw card games, and Daisy gave me a little folding mirror one of the rubes left behind, so I had something in my bunk that looked like mine.

The crew all minded themselves, and even though my palms turned to calluses, it was less trouble than most places; it felt safe as houses, mostly.

The lions had to come out of the train car at every stop, same as the team of six trick dogs and the two ferrets and the handful of parakeets that were all in love with each other and couldn’t stop singing about it.

As soon as we pulled into a city, Daisy and Peter and I hauled the train car door open, and all the cages got rolled down the ramp and out to wherever the animal gallery would be, so people could pay to stand in front of them and wait for them to do something interesting.

There were nearly fifty crew who traveled with the circus; we drew straws to see which two of us had to handle the lion cage.

(Once I drew a short straw, and Joseph slipped it out of my fingers and handed me his. Nobody argued it. The back of my neck went hot; he was looking at me.)

Some of the others didn’t seem bothered by the lions, aside from making sure to keep clear of their claws. A few seemed uneasy but afraid to show it — Peter and Richard would sing a dirty song in two parts to cover up their nerves whenever they drew short straws and had to roll the cage out.

Joseph and Daisy never so much as turned their faces toward the cage, any time they were close enough that the lions could see.

Those cats were cougars for sure, to look at. If you were some rube from just outside town who came to the circus to gasp and gape at the acts, and purposely drop popcorn where the parakeets could reach it just to watch them flutter after it, you might pass by the mountain lions and think only how smooth their fur was as they sprawled carefully in the shade of the cage, and keep going.

But I’d seen a mountain lion once, at home in the bitterest winter I remember. The snow was deep and it must have gotten desperate, and one night it came pacing around the house, barely leaving footprints even though the snow was three feet high. We’d brought our pig inside, but it might have been feeling lucky.

When I held out the lantern to frighten it off before my sister had to use the shotgun, its eyes had glinted bright and flat and gold, lamps answering lamps in the second before it turned to run.