Me, I’d learned to love a gun, and all it could do and do for me and my Daddy.

That night, I slept in my bed for the first time in over a year. I had as long to take off as other kids did during the summer, but I never had to do much in the way of schooling; Daddy and the doggie-lady’d already taught me how to read, and Daddy read to me and had me read to him. And he taught me how to do numbers, what so I could add, subtract and the like, and then he showed me electricity worked, and his gadgets, too. I waren’t quite so interested in that as I was the pistols, and he was fine with it. ‘God makes us all, honeybunch,” he said, “an’ he makes us all different. He made me to like gadgets, and he made you to like guns, and that’s just jim-dandy for everything!”

“What did he make Ma to like, Daddy?” I’d asked. I was stupid, then. I thought I could make Ma smile if I knew what she liked, because then I could go get it for her at the store with the money we was making.

“Well,” Daddy said, “he made your Ma to like some things, but they’s mostly what we ain’t got. I think that when we get back, she’ll have had a chance to figure out what she really does like, and we’ll be set again, like we was before things got tougher for us.”

“You mean afore I was born?”

“Honeybunch, you were the best thing the Dear Lord ever gave to your Ma and me, and we both knowed it. Your Ma’s just not the kind’ve gal who can show it well, ‘cause she wasn’t given it much when she was little herself.”

“Why not?”

“Your Ma’s people, well, when you say no to ‘em . . . well, they tend to try an’ fix things, and not for the better. They never wanted your Ma to marry me. They thought I jes’ wanted money. But that wasn’t at all. I just loved what she was, then. Full of sparkle, full of life. She’d been sad when I met her, on account of some fella who said he was gonna marry her changed his mind an’ walked oft. But to me, she was the most beautiful woman you ever did see. I only saw her ‘cause I was delivering the groceries, but we hit it off, and one thing led to another, an’ then...well we got married, and you came along, an’ I been happy ever since!”

I smiled. I knew a good bit of it wasn’t all the way true, prob’ly, but I was still happy. Daddy made everything good, and when he said he was gonna do something, he near always delivered. When I was tempted to get mad at him for the house we lived in or the way other kids got more, I though of Jim Jespers, whose Pa came home drunk and angry every Saturday night and beat on him, his little sister and his Ma. Or June Apling, whose Poppa had the biggest house in town but was never home, always on business trips, and her Momma was always cryin’ and drinkin’ booze and mumbling to herself while he was gone.

But me? My Daddy spanked me some when I was little, and we never had much money, but he’d wrangled it so’s I saw more of the world than any kid in town- heck, maybe any kid in the state! Life was good, and I slept in my room, in my bed, and didn’t care how dusty everything was- I was home, we had money, and Ma had no reason to be upset. I didn’t even hear her yelling at Daddy none while I drifted off, just their voices talking low and quiet, all until . . .

I woke up the next morning to the sunbeams comin’ through my window. It was quiet- another good sign, ‘cause usually Ma started yellin’ at Daddy with the sunrise the way rooster’s started crowin’.

I crept downstairs. Daddy was in his nightshirt, the one that went all the way to his ankles. He was starin’ out the window with a piece of paper in his hand, a cup of coffee steaming on the edge of our beat-up kitchen table he’d gotten for Ma at a rummage sale an’ repainted for her as an anniversary present.

“Daddy?” I said. It waren’t like him to be quiet. He was usually up and out back workin’ on his latest project by the time I ever come downstairs.

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He jumped a little when he heard me, standin’ up quick and stuffing the paper into his nightshirt’s only pocket. “Hey, hey honeybunch,” he said, looking at me and trying to smile. His eyes were red, like the Jesper’s girl when her allergies got real bad. “You’re . . .you’re up early, hon! Everything ok?”

He reached out to give me a hug, which was ok. He hugged me a lot, and that was another reason I liked him better than the other Daddies in town; most of them never gave so much as a pat on the head to their kids, but Daddy was always free with his hugs to me. But this time his hug felt a little strange, like his heart waren’t in it.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” I said.

“Wrong, honeybunch?”

“Where’s Ma?”

Daddy sat back down, his hand stroking his pocket some, making the paper inside crinkle.

“Ma, honey she needs- well, sometimes, a woman needs some time to herself. She’s on a little vacation right now, and she’s gonna be there for a while. Maybe we- um-” he stopped talkin’ for a second to wipe his eyes. “Maybe we need to do something- something fun! Yeah! You wanna go shootin’ in the back yard?”

I knew something was up, something worse’n what he’d let on. But I also knew if’n I asked about it he’d go back to cryin’, and that’s the last thing any daughter with a soul worth a plugged nickel wants to see her Daddy do, if she can avoid it.

So we shot up the back yard. Daddy n’ I thought up new stuff to do, like throw three cans in the air, shoot one and make it rebound off’ve the other two. That needed work, but we got it down after a while. Daddy an’ me took the longest walk we ever did, an’ he talked about Ma. A lot. Mainly about how they met. He was seventeen, an’ delivering groceries to a real fancy house out in the biggest city in the whole, wide world [which for him then was Indianapolis]. He’d come through the backdoor and was givin’ the bags to the cook when he saw the prettiest, most beautiful gal he’d ever seen.

“Ma was the cook?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said, it turned out she was the daughter of the rich man who owned the place. Well, to have a gal that pretty talking to you was every boy’s dream, but she was rich besides! Later, he found out that she was fightin’ something fierce with her own Daddy, on account of her bein’ told she had to marry some cousin or other of hers. She talked to Daddy, then met him at night, then they run oft together an’ got married at a justice of the peace. They ran in Daddy’s beat up old car, and ran outta gas an’ money in the town we settled in. End of story.

Time marched on. Christmas came. Ma didn’t. Daddy got me every present I’d ever wanted, and we went to Mass that morning like he promised Father O’Hanlon we would. I got dolls and dresses, which I liked, and he invited two other families to join us for Christmas dinner. They were families that didn’t have a lot, but they both brought a good few jugs of booze with ‘em, so Daddy n’ them got on real good. There was a good, warm fire, an’ singin’, and even some dancing in our living room when Daddy and the other grownups’d had enough hooch. The kids were nice, too; Daddy’d gotten a present for each one of ‘em, and they was happy, too, and taught me how to play jacks, an’ crazy eights, and a whole bunch of other games after dinner.

It was the best Christmas I’ll ever have. Even without Ma. Well, maybe because Ma wasn’t there. I know it’s shameful to say, but it was true, at least for me. I was almost sorry when we had to go back to the circus six weeks later.

Going back was the best! Daddy saw his friends, and was so happy. And I had my own friends by now with the kids who were either performers or children of the performers, and we all got to have fun too.

I was twelve by then. Had my birthday just before we left. Still didn’t hear from Ma. She was still on her vacation.

Life got good, and stayed good. I got older, and Daddy got older. We went home during the off season and had good Christmases with the same poor families, and saw the same good friends we made in each city in America and Europe. Father O’Malley in Saint Louis was Daddy’s favorite of these friends, and he helped Daddy to get something called an ann-oole-ment, which meant that since Ma wasn’t gonna be coming back and never really meant to love Daddy forever, that their marriage wasn’t really real and Daddy could get married if he found someone. I was a bit concerned if this made me illegal in any way, but Father told me “No child ever made in this world is illegal, little Jane. And you are legal and legitimate as the day is long in America.”

Sounded fine to me. Now Daddy was happy, I was happy, and life went just grand.

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TO BE CONTINUED....