Water for Elephants

backward.

“Oh, Queenie! Where were you, you bad, bad girl? You had me so worried, you bad, bad girl!” Walter offers his face and head for licking, and Queenie wiggles and squirms in delight.

“Where was she?” I ask, turning to Marlena.

“She was running alongside the train when we pulled out yesterday,” she says, keeping her eyes trained on Walter and Queenie. “I saw her from the window and sent Auggie out. He got down on his belly on the platform and scooped her up.”

“August did?” I say. “Really?”

“Yes. And then she bit him for his trouble.”

Walter wraps both arms around his dog and buries his face in her coat.

Marlena watches for a moment longer and then turns toward the door. “Well, I guess I’ll be on my way,” she says.

“Marlena,” I say, reaching for her arm.

She stops.

“Thank you,” I say, dropping my hand. “You have no idea what this means to him. To us, really.”

She throws me the quickest of glances—with just the merest hint of a smile—and then looks over the backs of her horses. “Yes. Yes. I think I do.”

My eyes are moist as she climbs down from the car.

“WELL, WHADYA KNOW,” SAYS CAMEL. “Maybe he’s human after all.”

“Who? August?” says Walter. He leans, grabs the handle of a trunk, and drags it across the floor. We’re arranging the room into its daytime configuration, although Walter does everything at half speed because he insists on holding Queenie under one arm. “Never.”

“You can let her go, you know,” I say. “The door’s closed.”

“He saved your dog,” Camel points out.

“He wouldn’t have if he’d known she was mine. Queenie knows that. That’s why she bit him. Yes, you knew, didn’t you, baby?” he says, pulling her snout up to his face and reverting to baby talk. “Yes, Queenie is a clever girl.”

“What makes you think he didn’t know?” I say. “Marlena knew.”

“Because I just know. There’s not a human bone in that kike’s body.”

“Watch your damned mouth!” I shout.

Walter stops to look at me. “What? Oh, hey, you’re not Jewish, are you? Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It was just a cheap shot,” he says.

“Yes, it was a cheap shot,” I say, still shouting. “They’re all cheap shots and I’m getting mighty damned sick of them. If you’re a performer, you take shots at the working men. If you’re a working man, you take shots at Poles. If you’re a Pole, you take shots at Jews. And if you’re a dwarf—well, you tell me, Walter? Is it just Jews and working men you hate, or do you also hate Poles?”

Walter reddens and looks down. “I don’t hate ’em. I don’t hate anybody.” After a moment he adds, “Well, okay, I really do hate August. But I hate him because he’s a crazy son of a bitch.”

“Can’t argue with that,” croaks Camel.

I look from Camel to Walter, and then back again. “No,” I say with a sigh. “No, I suppose you can’t.”

IN HAMILTON, THE TEMPERATURE creeps up into the nineties, the sun beats relentlessly on the lot, and the lemonade goes missing.

The man from the juice joint, who left the great mixing vat for no more than a few minutes, storms off to Uncle Al, convinced that roustabouts are responsible.

Uncle Al has them rounded up. They emerge from the behind the stable tent and menagerie, sleepy, with straw in their hair. I observe from some distance, but it’s hard not to think they have an air of innocence about them.

Apparently Uncle Al doesn’t agree. He storms back and forth, bellowing like Genghis Khan at a troop inspection. He screams in their faces, details the cost—both in supplies and lost sales—of the stolen lemonade and tells them that every one of them will have his pay docked the next time it happens. He whacks a few upside the head and dismisses them. They creep back to their resting spots, rubbing their heads and eyeing each other with suspicion.

With only ten minutes before the gate opens, the men at the juice joint mix up another batch using water from the animal troughs. They filter out the stray oats, hay, and whiskers through a pair of hose donated by a clown, and by the time they toss in the “floaters”—wax lemon slices designed to give the impression that the concoction actually met fruit somewhere along the line—a swell of rubes is already approaching the midway. I don’t know if the hose were clean, but I do notice that everyone on the show abstains from drinking lemonade that day.

The lemonade goes missing again in Dayton. Once again, a new batch is mixed up with trough water and set out moments before the rubes descend.

This time, when Uncle Al rounds up all the usual suspects, rather than docking their pay—a meaningless threat anyway since not one of them has been paid in more than eight weeks—he forces them to fish out the chamois grouch bags that hang around their necks and hand over two quarters each. The holders of the grouch bags become grouchy indeed.

The lemonade thief has hit the roustabouts where it hurts, and they’re prepared to take action. When we get to Columbus, a few of them hide near the mixing vat and wait.

SHORTLY BEFORE SHOWTIME, August summons me to Marlena’s dressing tent to look at an advertisement for a white liberty horse. Marlena needs another because twelve horses are more spectacular then ten, and spectacular is what it’s all about. Besides, Marlena thinks Boaz is getting depressed at being left by himself in the menagerie while the others perform. This is what August says, but I think I’m being restored to favor after my blowup in the cookhouse. That, or August has decided to keep his friends close and his enemies even closer.

I’m sitting in a folding chair with Billboard on my lap and a bottle of sarsaparilla in my hand. Marlena is at the mirror adjusting her costume, and I’m trying not to stare. The one time our eyes meet in the mirror, I catch my breath, she reddens, and we both look elsewhere.

August is oblivious, buttoning his waistcoat and chatting amiably when Uncle Al bursts through the flap.

Marlena turns, outraged. “Hey—ever heard of asking before you barge into a lady’s dressing tent?”

Uncle Al pays no attention to her at all. He marches straight to August and jabs his finger in his chest.

“It’s your goddamned bull!” he screams.

August looks down at the finger sticking into his chest, pauses a few beats, and then takes it daintily between thumb and forefinger. He moves Uncle Al’s hand aside, and then flicks a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the spit from his face.

“I beg your pardon?” he asks at the end of this operation.

“It’s your goddamned thieving bull!” screams Uncle Al, once again showering August with spit. “She pulls out her stake, takes it with her, drinks the goddamned lemonade, then goes back and sticks her stake in the ground!”

Marlena claps a hand over her mouth, but not in time.

Uncle Al spins, furious. “You think it’s funny? You think it’s funny?”

The blood drains from her face.

I rise from my chair and step forward. “Well, you have to admit there’s a certain—”

Uncle Al turns, plants both hands squarely on my chest and shoves me so hard I fall backward onto a trunk.

He twists around to August. “That fucking bull cost me a fortune! She’s the reason I couldn’t pay the men and had to take care of business and caught heat from the goddamned railroad authority! And for what? The goddamned thing won’t perform and she steals the fucking lemonade!”

“Al!” August says sharply. “Watch your mouth. I’ll have you remember you’re in the presence of a lady.”

Uncle Al’s head swivels. He regards Marlena without remorse and turns back to August.

“Woody’s going to tally up the losses,” he says. “I’m taking it from your pay.”

“You’ve already taken it from the roustabouts,” Marlena says quietly. “Are you planning to return their