I look up. August peers down at me, grinning, his hair blowing in the wind.
I climb to the roof. He moves over, and when I sit down next to him he claps a hand on my shoulder. “Turn around. I want you to see something.”
He points down the length of the train. It stretches behind us like a giant snake, the linked cars jiggling and bending as it rounds a curve.
“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it, Jacob?” says August. I look back at him. He’s staring right at me, his eyes glowing. “Not quite as beautiful as my Marlena, though—hey hey?” He clicks his tongue and winks.
Before I can protest, he stands and tap-dances across the roof.
I crane my neck and count stock cars. There are at least six.
“August?”
“What?” he says, stopping midtwirl.
“Which car is Kinko in?”
He crouches suddenly. “This one. Aren’t you a lucky boy?” He pries off a roof vent and disappears.
I scuttle over on hands and knees.
“August?”
“What?” returns a voice from the darkness.
“Is there a ladder?”
“No, just drop down.”
I lower myself inside until I’m hanging by my fingertips. Then I crash to the floor. A surprised nicker greets me.
Thin strips of moonlight filter through the slatted sides of the stock car. On one side of me is a line of horses. The other side is blocked by a wall that is clearly homemade.
August steps forward and shoves the door inward. It crashes against the wall behind it, revealing a makeshift room lit by kerosene lamp. The lamp is on an upturned crate next to a cot. A dwarf is lying on his stomach with a thick book open in front of him. He’s about my age and, like me, has red hair. Unlike me, his stands straight up from his head, an unruly thatch. His face, neck, arms, and hands are heavily freckled.
“Kinko,” says August in disgust.
“August,” says the dwarf, equally disgusted.
“This is Jacob,” August says, taking a tour of the tiny room. He leans over and fingers things as he passes. “He’s going to bunk with you for a while.”
I step forward, holding out my hand. “How do you do,” I say.
Kinko regards my hand coolly and then looks back at August. “What is he?”
“His name is Jacob.”
“I said what, not who.”
“He’s going to help out in the menagerie.”
Kinko leaps to his feet. “A menagerie man? Forget it. I’m a performer. There’s no way I’m bunking with a working man.”
There’s a growl from behind him, and for the first time I see the Jack Russell terrier. She’s standing on the end of the cot with her hackles raised.
“I am the equestrian director and superintendent of animals,” August says slowly, “and it is by the grace of my generosity you are allowed to sleep here at all. It is also by the grace of my generosity that it’s not filled with roustabouts. Of course, I can always change that. Besides, this gentleman is the show’s new veterinarian—from Cornell no less—which puts him a good deal higher than you in my estimation. Perhaps you’d like to consider offering him the cot.” The lamp’s flame flickers in August’s eyes. His lip quivers in its shadowy glow.
After a moment he turns to me and bows low, clicking his heels. “Good night, Jacob. I’m sure Kinko will make you comfortable. Won’t you, Kinko?”
Kinko glowers at him.
August smoothes both sides of his hair with his hands. Then he leaves, pulling the door shut behind him. I stare at the rough-hewn wood until I hear his footsteps clatter over top of us. Then I turn around.
Kinko and the dog are staring at me. The dog lifts her lip and snarls.
I SPEND THE NIGHT on a crumpled horse blanket against the wall, as far from the cot as I can. The blanket is damp. Whoever covered the slats when they turned this into a room did a lousy job, so the blanket’s been rained on and reeks of mildew.
I wake with a start. I’ve scratched my arms and neck raw. I don’t know if it’s from sleeping on horsehair or vermin and don’t want to know. The sky that shows between the patched slats is black, and the train is still moving.
I awoke because of a dream, but I can’t recall specifics. I close my eyes, reaching tentatively for the corners of my mind.
It’s my mother. She’s standing in the yard in a cornflower blue dress hanging laundry on the line. She has wooden clothes pegs in her mouth and more in an apron tied around her waist. Her fingers are busy with a sheet. She’s singing quietly in Polish.
I’m lying on the floor, looking up at the stripper’s dangling breasts. Her nipples, brown and the size of silver dollar pancakes, swing in circles—out and around, SLAP. Out and around, SLAP. I feel a pang of excitement, then remorse, and then nausea.
And then I’m . . .
I’m . . .
I’m blubbering like the ancient fool I am, that’s what.
I guess I was asleep. I could have sworn that just a few seconds ago I was twenty-three, and now here I am in this wretched, desiccated body.
I sniff and wipe my stupid tears, trying to pull myself together because that girl is back, the plump one in pink. She either worked all night or I lost track of a day. I hate not knowing which.
I also wish I could remember her name, but I can’t. That’s how it is when you’re ninety. Or ninety-three.
“Good morning, Mr. Jankowski,” the nurse says, flipping on the light. She walks to the window and adjusts the horizontal blinds to let in sunlight. “Time to rise and shine.”
“What for?” I grumble.
“Because the good Lord has seen fit to bless you with another day,” she says, coming to my side. She presses a button on my bedrail. My bed starts to hum. A few seconds later I’m sitting upright. “Besides, you’re going to the circus tomorrow.”
The circus! So I haven’t lost a day.
She pops a disposable cone on a thermometer and sticks it in my ear. I get poked and prodded like this every morning. I’m like a piece of meat unearthed from the back of the fridge, suspect until proven otherwise.
After the thermometer beeps, the nurse flicks the cone into the waste-basket and writes something on my chart. Then she pulls the blood pressure cuff from the wall.
“So, do you want to have breakfast in the dining room this morning, or would you like me to bring you something here?” she asks, wrapping the cuff around my arm and inflating it.
“I don’t want breakfast.”
“Come now, Mr. Jankowski,” she says, pressing a stethoscope to the inside of my elbow and watching the gauge. “You’ve got to keep your strength up.”
I try to catch sight of her name tag. “What for? So I can run a marathon?”
“So you don’t catch something and miss the circus,” she says. After the cuff deflates, she removes the apparatus from my arm and hangs it back on the wall.
Finally! I can see her name.
“I’ll have it in here then, Rosemary,” I say, thereby proving that I remembered her name. Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work but important. Anyway, I’m not really addled. I just have more facts to keep track of than other people.
