He told Daddy that if I traveled with the circus and did my trick shots, they’d pay us . . . well, I never did find out just how much it was, but it made Daddy’s jaw drop and Ma stopped complaining for nigh a whole week.
I ended up goin’ round the country, and then through Europe, where they spoke funny but the food was good and the people were real nice to me and Daddy. He said he’d have to come with me, and they said, ‘Of course!’ And then he said I’d have to keep up with my schooling, and they said, ‘Of course!’ Then had me and the other kids go to school on the road. I didn’t like it at first- it was an hour a day that I coulda been shootin’ and having fun, but you know after a while I liked it real good. I learned how to read better. Miss Lawson, the lady who was both the teacher and the doggie trainer, she was nice and patient with us and worked real well. I got to be the best reader in the class, and, well, okay, the class had only ten kids in it, but it was still good. I started reading more an’ more. I liked the Wizard of Oz,there was maybe twenty of them books, each one was just plumb crazier than the last one, it seemed. And Miss Lawson had these neat mysteries that got solved by a papist named Father Brown.
We traveled with the Circus for two years, Daddy an’ me. He took our pay each week and socked it away under the mattress we slept in, until we got to a town with a good strong bank and then he put the whole mess in there. I asked him once why he wasn’t sending it home to Ma, and he said ‘I do send some home, honeybunch. Ma won’t starve, but if she wants to live like a queen she’s gonna hafta get a job herself. This is to make sure we got the money after this circus thing peters out.”
Poor Daddy. He knew how things were for folks like us. There waren’t no gravy train gonna keep comin’ forever, we’d have it good for a bit, an’ then we’d hafta find a new way to keep the money rolin’ in.
After two years, we’d run the gamut. No new places, and we were gonna start up again after a short rest. Daddy an’ I hadda come up with new tricks to keep the audiences interested. They wasn’t gonna pay a dollar each to see the same act they’d seen last year, and some places were pretty rowdy, let me tell ya!
It waren’t too tough. We’d been enough of a draw that we’d been given little raises throughout the year. Mr. Barnum had put me front an’ center on a lot of the new posters, an’ come by three or four times after the show to our trailer, all personal-like, shook my hand, shook Daddy’s hand, said how happy he was we were there.
Well, that was the happiest I ever was, lemme tell you! Ma wasn’t there to stir up trouble with Daddy, we had three square a day and the bed was always warm at night, there was kids my own age to play with and we all got along; even Daddy got some respect here an’ there, and I saw he had some friends with the strong man and Electro the wonder wizard. Daddy was skinny, but he knew a few things, like how to arrange the weights on Julis the strongman’s barbells in such a way that it was easier for him to lift, so he could put even more on his bar. An Daddy knew gadgets well enough that he able to make Electro’s lightning bolts look even bigger, snap louder, and they even looked more blue and more white than before. The audience went from ‘oooh’ to “WOW’ in seconds, and Mr. Barnum made another visit to Daddy, this time with a bottle of booze. They had a drink together and laughed a bit, and I knowed Daddy’d finally found his place in the world. It was tough for him, I always knew, when the other men got up and went to work in the mornings either at the mill or on their farms and he was stuck trying to make his gadgets work and make money from that. He was a happy man, when Ma wasn’t yelling at him, but he was sad at nights, when all the men went to the saloon and spent their money on booze and cards, and he was stuck at home with Ma.
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But now, he always went around with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He was at home, with a buncha people who were all misfits where they came from, like he was. But they were all’s alike in a lot of ways- the kind’ve jokes they told, the way they liked going from town to town, seeing new things alla time- and Daddy loved it, I think, even more than I did.
And I do think Daddy had more friends in the circus than he ever did in his whole life. Electro the electricity showman and him could talk and tinker for hours about how to make them bolts bigger and brighter. He had fun with the clowns, which I thought was nice, since no one else seemed to wanna talk to them. He tried to crack a few jokes with the trapeze guy, but him and his lady friend were all snooty, acting alla time like they were better’n the rest of us. His best friend, though, got to be the strongman, Ignazzio, a nice fella from Italy with a mustache like a set of handlebars. He’d let Daddy try to lift his weights and they’d have a good laugh, but Daddy eventually got to where he could lift some, and he got a little stronger.
Later, when we went through St. Louis, there was a priest everyone knew and loved there. He’d grown up in a circus hisself, so he always came to see performers when they’d come to town. Father O’Hanlon would baptize the babies of the ladies, some what had husbands but many did not. And he’d hold a real, life Papist Mass for folks who’d wanna come. Ignazzio and the Eye-talians came, and Ignazzio talked Daddy into dropping by. And Father O’Hanlon took a shine to Daddy and talked with him near all night about what was true and ain’t, about science an’ faith. Father O’Hanlon musta had a serious way with words, ‘cause come morning Daddy got hisself baptized, communed and confirmed, all a’ once, and just like that we was Papists! Well, I couldn’t call us that no more. I got baptized too, and I was very, very happy all I hadda do as a Pap-sorry, a Catholic was to get it poured on me a little. I was scared of being pushed all-the way underwater, like the Baptists did back home.
The first winter we went home. Ma met us at the train station. She didn’t smile, which I was not surprised at. Looking back, I can’t remember a single time she smiled when Daddy was in the room, so it didn’t seem all that unusual then when she met us.
We went back to the house- it was the same. Not much more than a shack, really, but Ma had stuffed a lot of the cracks that had kept us cold in winter and hot in summer with plaster and thatch. It was November, and we didn’t hafta be back at the Circus until February. Daddy said as we rode the train home that we’d spend the time bein’ happy with Ma, and figuring out new tricks with my six guns. Daddy’d gotten me new ones with the money we’d made, pretty ones, lookin’ like they was made with polished silver and with mother-of-pearl lining on the stock. I never went out much for girly-girl stuff, but when I saw them pistols? I felt like my heart was gonna jump right outta my throat and blast through my ears, I was so happy! Some girls, they love dolls. And some go for dresses. Me, I’d learned to love a gun, and all it could do and do for me and my Daddy.
TO BE CONTINUED...