Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen

 

Five

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.

“I do declare you’re as strong as a horse,” she says, writing one last thing down before flipping my chart shut. “If you keep your weight up, I’ll bet you could go on another ten years.”

“Swell,” I say.

WHEN ROSEMARY COMES to park me in the hallway, I ask her to take me to the window so I can watch the goings-on at the park.

It’s a beautiful day, with the sun streaming down between puffy clouds. Just as well—I remember all too well what it’s like to work on a circus lot when the weather is foul. Not that the work is anything like what it used to be. I wonder if they’re even called roustabouts any more. And sleeping quarters sure have improved—just look at those RVs. Some of them even have portable satellite dishes attached to them.

Shortly after lunch, I spot the first nursing home resident being wheeled up the street by relatives. Ten minutes later there’s a veritable wagon train. There’s Ruthie—oh, and Nellie Compton, too, but what’s the point? She’s a turnip, she won’t remember a thing. And there’s Doris—that must be her Randall she’s always talking about. And there’s that bastard McGuinty. Oh yes, cock-of-the-walk, with his family surrounding him and a plaid blanket spread over his knees. Spouting elephant stories, no doubt.

There’s a line of glorious Percherons behind the big top, every one of them gleaming white. Maybe they’re for vaulting? Horses in vaulting acts are always white so that the powdered rosin that makes the performer’s feet stick to their backs won’t show.

Even if it is a liberty act, there’s no reason to think it could hold a candle to Marlena’s. There’s nothing and no one who could compare to Marlena.

I look for an elephant, with equal parts dread and disappointment.

THE WAGON TRAIN RETURNS later in the afternoon with balloons tied to their chairs and silly hats on their heads. Some even hold bags of cotton candy in their laps—bags! For all they know, the floss could be a week old. In my day it was fresh, spun from a drum onto a paper cone.

At five o’clock, a slim nurse with a horse face comes to the end of the hall. “Are you ready for your dinner, Mr. Jankowski?” she says, kicking off my brakes and spinning me around.

“Hrrmph,” I say, cranky that she didn’t wait for an answer.

When we get to the dining room, she steers me toward my usual table.

“No, wait!” I say. “I don’t want to sit there tonight.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Jankowski,” she says. “I’m sure Mr. McGuinty has forgiven you for last night.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t forgiven him. I want to sit over there,” I say, pointing at another table.

“But there’s nobody at that table,” she says.

“Exactly.”

“Oh, Mr. Jankowski. Why don’t you just let me—”

“Just put me where I asked you to, damn it.”

My chair stops and there is dead silence from behind it. After a few seconds we start moving again. The nurse parks me at my chosen table and leaves. When she returns to plunk a plate down in front of me, her lips are pursed primly.

The main difficulty with sitting at a table by yourself is that there’s nothing to distract you from hearing other people’s conversations. I’m not eavesdropping; I just can’t help hearing it. Most of them are talking about the circus, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is Old Fart McGuinty sitting at my regular table, with my lady friends, and holding court like King Arthur. And that’s not all—apparently he told someone who worked for the circus that he used to carry water for the elephants, and they upgraded his ticket to a ringside seat! Incredible! And there he sits, yammering on and on about the special treatment he received while Hazel, Doris, and Norma stare adoringly.

I can stand it no longer. I look down at my plate. Stewed something under pale gravy with a side of pockmarked Jell-O.

“Nurse!” I bark. “Nurse!”

One of them looks up and catches my eye. Since it’s clear I’m not dying, she takes her sweet time getting to me.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Jankowski?”

“How about getting me some real food?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Real food. You know—that stuff people on the outside get to eat.”

“Oh, Mr. Jankowski—”

“Don’t you ‘Oh, Mr. Jankowski’ me, young lady. This is nursery food, and last I looked I wasn’t five years old. I’m ninety. Or ninety-three.”

“It’s not nursery food.”

“Yes it is. There’s no substance. Look—” I say, dragging my fork through the gravy-covered heap. It falls off in glops, leaving me holding a coated fork. “You call that food? I want something I can sink my teeth into. Something that crunches. And what, exactly, is this supposed to be?” I say, poking the lump of red Jell-O. It jiggles outrageously, like a breast I once knew.

“It’s salad.”

“Salad? Do you see any vegetables? I don’t see any vegetables.”

“It’s fruit salad,” she says, her voice steady but forced.

“Do you see any fruit?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact I do,” she says, pointing at a pock. “There. And there. That’s a piece of banana, and that’s a grape. Why don’t you try it?”

“Why don’t you try it?”

She folds her arms across her chest. The schoolmarm has run out of patience. “This food is for the residents. It’s designed specifically by a nutritionist who specializes in geriatric—”

“I don’t want it. I want real food.”

There’s dead silence in the room. I look around. All eyes are trained on me. “What?” I say loudly. “Is that so much to ask? Doesn’t anyone else here miss real food? Surely you can’t all be happy with this . . . this . . . pap?” I put my hand on the edge of my plate and give it a shove.

Just a little one.

Really.

My plate shoots across the table and crashes to the floor.

DR. RASHID IS summoned. She sits at my bedside and asks questions that I try to answer courteously, but I’m so tired of being treated as though I’m unreasonable that I’m afraid I may come off as a bit crotchety.

After a half hour she asks the nurse to come into the hallway with her. I strain to hear, but my old ears, for all their obscene hugeness, pick up nothing but snippets: “serious, serious depression” and “manifesting as aggression, not uncommon in geriatric patients.”

“I’m not deaf, you know!” I shout from my bed. “Just old!”

Dr. Rashid peers in at me and takes the nurse’s elbow. They move down the hall and out of earshot.

THAT NIGHT, A new pill appears in my paper cup. The pills are already in my palm before I notice it.

“What’s this?” I ask, pushing it around. I flip it over and inspect the other side.

“What?” says the nurse.

“This,” I say, poking the offending pill. “This one right here. It’s new.”

“It’s called Elavil.”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s going to help you feel better.”

“What’s it for?” I repeat.

She doesn’t answer. I look up. Our eyes meet.

“Depression,” she says finally.

“I won’t take it.”

“Mr. Jankowski—”

“I’m not depressed.”

“Dr. Rashid prescribed it. It’s going to—”

“You want to drug me. You want to turn me into a Jell-O-eating sheep. I won’t take it, I tell you.”

“Mr. Jankowski. I have twelve other patients to take care of. Now please take your pills.”

“I thought we were residents.”

Every one of her pinched features hardens.

“I’ll take the others but not this,” I say, flicking the pill from my hand. It flies through the air and lands on the floor. I toss the others into my mouth. “Where’s my water?” I say, my words garbled because I’m trying to keep the pills on the center of my tongue.

She hands me a plastic cup, retrieves the pill from the floor, and goes into my bathroom. I hear a flush. Then she comes back.

“Mr. Jankowski. I am going to go get another Elavil and if you won’t take it, I will call Dr. Rashid, and she will prescribe an injectable instead. Either way, you are taking the Elavil. How you do so is up to you.”

When she brings the pill, I swallow it. A quarter of an hour later, I also get an injection—not of Elavil, of something else, but still it doesn’t seem fair because I took their damned pill.

Within minutes, I am a Jell-O-eating sheep. Well, a sheep at any rate. But because I keep reminding myself of the incident that brought this misfortune upon me, I realize that if someone brought pockmarked Jell-O right now and told me to eat it, I would.

What have they done to me?

I cling to my anger with every ounce of humanity left in my ruined body, but it’s no use. It slips away, like a wave from shore. I am pondering this sad fact when I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It’s been there awhile, biding its time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry again in the morning. Then I let myself drift, because there’s really no fighting it.

 

Six

The train groans, straining against the increasing resistance of air brakes. After several minutes and a final, prolonged shriek, the great iron beast shudders to a stop and exhales.

Kinko throws back his blanket and stands up. He’s no more than four feet tall, if that. He stretches, yawns, and smacks his lips, then scratches his head, armpits, and testicles. The dog dances around his feet, her stump of a tail wagging furiously.

“Come on, Queenie,” he says, scooping her up. “You want to go outside? Queenie go outside?” He plants a kiss in the middle of her brown and white head and crosses the little room.

I watch from my crumpled horse blanket in the corner.

“Kinko?” I say.

If it weren’t for the vehemence with which he slams the door, I might think he didn’t hear me.

WE ARE ON A SIDE rail behind the Flying Squadron, which has obviously been here a few hours. The tent city has already risen, to the delight of the crowd of townspeople hanging around watching. Rows of children sit on top of the Flying Squadron surveying the lot with shining eyes. Their parents congregate beneath, holding the hands of younger siblings and pointing to various marvels appearing in front of them.

The workmen from the main train climb down from the sleeper cars, light cigarettes, and trek across the lot toward the cookhouse. Its blue and orange flag is already flying and the boiler beside it belches steam, bearing cheerful witness to the breakfast within.

Performers emerge from sleepers closer to the back of the train and of obviously better quality. There’s a clear hierarchy: the closer to the back, the more impressive the quarters. Uncle Al himself climbs from a car right in front of the caboose. I can’t help but notice that Kinko and I are the human occupants closest to the engine.

“Jacob!”

I turn. August strides toward me, his shirt crisp, his chin scraped smooth. His slick hair bears the recent impression of a comb.

“How are we this morning, my boy?” he asks.

“All right,” I say. “A little tired.”

“Did that little troll give you any trouble?”

“No,” I say. “He was fine.”

“Good, good.” He claps his hands together. “Shall we have a look at that horse then? I doubt it’s anything serious. Marlena coddles them terribly. Oh, here’s the little lady now. Come here, darling,” he calls brightly. “I want you to meet Jacob. He’s a fan of yours.”

I feel a blush creep across my face.

She comes to a stop beside him, smiling up at me as August turns toward the stock car. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she says, extending her hand. Up close she still looks remarkably like Catherine—delicate features, pale as porcelain, with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Shimmering blue eyes, and hair just dark enough to disqualify as blonde.

“The pleasure is mine,” I say, painfully aware that I haven’t shaved in two days, my clothes are stiff with manure, and that manure is not the only unpleasant scent rising from my body.

She cocks her head slightly. “Say, you’re the one I saw yesterday, aren’t you? In the menagerie?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, lying instinctively.

“Sure you are. Right before the show. When the chimp den slammed shut.”

I glance at August, but he’s still facing the other way. She follows my gaze and seems to understand.

“You’re not from Boston, are you?” she says, her voice lowered.

“No. I’ve never been.”

“Huh,” she says. “It’s just you look familiar somehow. Oh well,” she continues brightly. “Auggie says you’re a vet.” At the sound of his name, August spins around.

“No,” I say. “I mean, not exactly.”

“He’s being modest,” says August. “Pete! Hey, Pete!”

A group of men stand in front of the stock car’s door, attaching a ramp with built-in sides. A tall one with dark hair turns. “Yeah, boss?” he says.

“Get the others unloaded and bring out Silver Star, will you?”

“Sure.”

Eleven horses later—five white and six black—Pete goes inside the stock car once again. A moment later he’s back. “Silver Star don’t want to move, boss.”

“Make him,” says August.

“Oh no you don’t,” says Marlena, shooting August a dirty look. She marches up the ramp and disappears.

August and I wait outside, listening to passionate entreaties and tongue clicks. After several minutes she reappears in the doorway with the silvermaned Arabian.

Marlena steps out in front of him, clicking and murmuring. He raises his head and pulls back. Eventually he follows her down the ramp, his head bobbing deeply with each step. At the bottom he pulls back so hard he almost sits on his haunches.

“Jesus, Marlena—I thought you said he was a bit off,” says August.

Marlena is ashen. “He was. He wasn’t anything like this bad yesterday. He’s been a bit lame for a few days, but nothing like this.”

She clicks and tugs until the horse finally steps onto the gravel. He stands with his back hunched, his hind legs bearing as much weight as they can. My heart sinks. It’s the classic walking-on-eggshells stance.

“What do you think it is?” says August.

“Give me a minute,” I say, although I’m already ninety-nine percent sure. “Do you have hoof testers?”

“No. But the smithy does. Do you want me to send Pete?”

“Not yet. I might not need them.”

I crouch beside the horse’s left shoulder and run my hands down his leg, from shoulder to fetlock. He doesn’t flinch. Then I lay my hand across the front of his hoof. It’s radiating heat. I place my thumb and forefinger on the back of his fetlock. His arterial pulse is pounding.

“Damn,” I say.

“What is it?” says Marlena.

I straighten up and reach for Silver Star’s foot. He leaves it firmly on the ground.

“Come on, boy,” I say, pulling on his hoof.

Eventually he lifts it. The sole is bulging and dark, with a red line running around the edge. I set it down immediately.

“This horse is foundering,” I say.

“Oh dear God!” says Marlena, clapping a hand to her mouth.

“What?” says August. “He’s what?”

“Foundering,” I say. “It’s when the connective tissues between the hoof and the coffin bone are compromised and the coffin bone rotates toward the sole of the hoof.”

“In English, please. Is it bad?”

I glance at Marlena, who is still covering her mouth. “Yes,” I say.

“Can you fix it?”

“We can bed him up real thick, and try to keep him off his feet. Grass hay only and no grain. And no work.”

“But can you fix it?”

I hesitate, glancing quickly at Marlena. “Probably not.”

August stares at Silver Star and exhales through puffed cheeks.

“Well, well, well!” booms an unmistakable voice from behind us. “If it isn’t our very own animal doctor!”

Uncle Al floats toward us in black and white checked pants and a crimson vest. He carries a silver-topped cane, which he swings extravagantly with each step. A handful of people straggle behind him.

“So what says the croaker? Did you sort out the horse?” he asks jovially, coming to a stop in front of me.

“Not exactly,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Apparently he’s foundering,” says August.

“He’s what?” says Uncle Al.

“It’s his feet.”

Uncle Al bends over, peering at Silver Star’s feet. “They look fine to me.”

“They’re not,” I say.

He turns to me. “So what do you propose to do about it?”

“Put him on stall rest and cut his grain. Other than that, there’s not much we can do.”

“Stall rest is out of the question. He’s the lead horse in the liberty act.”

“If this horse keeps working, his coffin bone will rotate until it punctures his sole, and then you’ll lose him,” I say unequivocally.

Uncle Al’s eyelids flicker. He looks over at Marlena.

“How long will he be out?”

I pause, choosing my next words carefully. “Possibly for good.”

“Goddammit!” he shouts, stabbing his cane into the earth. “Where the hell am I supposed to get another liberty horse midseason?” He looks around at his followers.

They shrug, mumble, and avert their gazes.

“Useless sons of bitches. Why do I even keep you? Okay, you—” He points his cane at me. “You’re on. Fix this horse. Nine bucks a week. You answer to August. Lose this horse and you’re out of here. In fact, first hint of trouble and you’re out of here.” He steps forward to Marlena and pats her shoulder. “There, there, my dear,” he says kindly. “Don’t fret. Jacob here will take good care of him. August, go get this little girl some breakfast, will you? We have to hit the road.”

August’s head jerks around. “What do you mean, ‘hit the road’?”

“We’re tearing down,” says Uncle Al, gesturing vaguely. “Moving along.”

“What the hell are you talking about? We just got here. We’re still setting up!”

“Change of plans, August. Change of plans.”

Uncle Al and his followers walk away. August stares after them, his mouth open wide.

RUMORS ABOUND IN THE COOKHOUSE.

In front of the hash browns:

“Carson Brothers got caught short-changing a few weeks ago. Burned the territory.”

“Ha,” snorts someone else. “That’s usually our job.

” In front of the scrambled eggs:

“They heard we was carrying booze. There’s gonna be a raid.”

“There’s gonna be a raid, all right,” comes the reply. “But it’s on account of the cooch tent, not the booze.”

In front of the oatmeal:

“Uncle Al stiffed the sheriff on the lot fee last year. Cops say we got two hours before they run us out.”

Ezra is slouched in the same position as yesterday, his arms crossed and his chin pressed into his chest. He pays me no attention whatever.

“Whoa there, big fella,” says August as I head for the canvas divider. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To the other side.”

“Nonsense,” he says. “You’re the show’s vet. Come with me. Although I must say, I’m tempted to send you over there just to find out what they’re saying.”

I follow August and Marlena to one of the nicely dressed tables. Kinko sits a few tables over, with three other dwarves and Queenie at his feet. She looks up hopefully, her tongue lolling off to the side. Kinko ignores her and everyone else at his table. He stares straight at me, his jaw moving grimly from side to side.

“Eat, darling,” says August, pushing a bowl of sugar toward Marlena’s porridge. “There’s no point fretting. We’ve got a bona fide veterinarian here.”

I open my mouth to protest, then shut it again.

A petite blonde approaches. “Marlena! Sweetie! You’ll never guess what I heard!”

“Hi, Lottie,” says Marlena. “I have no idea. What’s up?”

Lottie slides in beside Marlena and talks nonstop, almost without pausing for breath. She’s an aerialist and she got the straight scoop from a good authority—her spotter heard Uncle Al and the advance man exchanging heated words outside the big top. Before long a crowd surrounds our table, and between Lottie and the tidbits tossed out by her audience, I hear what amounts to a crash course on the history of Alan J. Bunkel and the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

Uncle Al is a buzzard, a vulture, an eater of carrion. Fifteen years ago he was the manager of a mud show: a ragtag group of pellagra-riddled performers dragged from town to town by miserable thrush-hoofed horses.

In August of 1928, through no fault of Wall Street, the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth collapsed. They simply ran out of money and couldn’t make the jump to the next town, never mind back to winter quarters. The general manager caught a train out of town and left everything behind—people, equipment, and animals.

Uncle Al had the good fortune to be in the vicinity and was able to score a sleeping car and two flats for a song from railroad officials desperate to free up their siding. Those two flats easily held his few decrepit wagons, and because the train cars were already emblazoned with BENZINI BROS MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW ON EARTH, Alan Bunkel retained the name and officially joined the ranks of train circuses.

When the Crash came, larger circuses started going down and Uncle Al could hardly believe his luck. It started with the Gentry Brothers and Buck Jones in 1929. The next year saw the end of the Cole Brothers, the Christy Brothers, and the mighty John Robinson. And every time a show closed, there was Uncle Al, sopping up the remains: a few train cars, a handful of stranded performers, a tiger, or a camel. He had scouts everywhere—the moment a larger circus showed signs of trouble, Uncle Al would get a telegram and race to the scene.

He grew fat off their carcasses. In Minneapolis, he picked up six parade wagons and a toothless lion. In Ohio, a sword swallower and a flat car. In Des Moines, a dressing tent, a hippopotamus and matching wagon, and the Lovely Lucinda. In Portland, eighteen draft horses, two zebras, and a smithy. In Seattle, two bunk cars and a bona fide freak—a bearded lady—and this made him happy, for what Uncle Al craves above all else, what Uncle Al dreams of at night, are freaks. Not made freaks: not men covered head to toe in tattoos, not women who regurgitate wallets and lightbulbs on command, not moss-haired girls or men who pound stakes into their sinus cavities. Uncle Al craves real freaks. Born freaks. And that is the reason for our detour to Joliet.

The Fox Brothers Circus has just collapsed, and Uncle Al is ecstatic because they employed the world-famous Charles Mansfield-Livingston, a handsome, dapper man with a parasitic twin growing out of his chest. He calls it Chaz. It looks like an infant with its head buried in his ribcage. He dresses it in miniature suits, with black patent shoes on its feet, and when Charles walks, he holds its little hands in his. Rumor has it that Chaz’s tiny penis even gets erections.

Uncle Al is desperate to get there before someone else snaps him up. And so, despite the fact that our posters are all over Saratoga Springs; despite the fact that it was supposed to be a two-day stop and we’ve just had 2,200 loaves of bread, 116 pounds of butter, 360 dozen eggs, 1,570 pounds of meat, 11 cases of sauerkraut, 105 pounds of sugar, 24 crates of oranges, 52 pounds of lard, 1,200 pounds of vegetables, and 212 cans of coffee delivered to the lot; despite the tons of hay and turnips and beets and other food for the animals that is piled out back of the menagerie tent; despite the hundreds of townspeople gathered at the edge of the lot right now, first in excitement, and then in bewilderment, and now in fast-growing anger; despite all this, we are tearing down and moving out.

The cook is apoplectic. The advance man is threatening to quit. The boss hostler is furious, whacking the beleaguered men of the Flying Squadron with flagrant abandon.

Everyone here has been down this route before. Mostly they’re worried they won’t be fed enough during the three-day journey to Joliet. The cookhouse crew are doing their best, scrabbling to haul as much food as they can back to the main train and promising to hand out dukeys—apparently some kind of boxed meal—at the first opportunity.

WHEN AUGUST LEARNS we have a three-day jump in front of us, he lets loose a string of curses, then strides back and forth, damning Uncle Al to hell and barking orders at the rest of us. While we haul food for the animals back to the train, August goes off to try to persuade—and if necessary, to bribe—the cookhouse steward into parting with some of the food meant for humans.

Diamond Joe and I carry buckets of offal from behind the menagerie to the main train. It’s from the local stockyards, and is repulsive—smelly, bloody, and charred. We put the buckets just inside the entrance of the stock cars. The inhabitants—camels, zebras, and other hay burners—kick and fuss and make all manner of protest, but they are going to have to travel with the meat because there is no other place to put it. The big cats travel on top of the flat cars in parade dens.

When we’re finished, I go looking for August. He’s behind the cookhouse loading a wheelbarrow with the odds and ends he’s managed to beg off the cookhouse crew.

“We’re pretty much loaded,” I say. “Should we do anything about water?”

“Dump and refill the buckets. They’ve loaded the water wagon, but it won’t last three days. We’ll have to stop along the way. Uncle Al may be a tough old crow, but he’s no fool. He won’t risk the animals. No animals, no circus. Is all the meat on board?”

“As much as will fit.”

“Priority goes to the meat. If you have to toss off hay to make room, do it. Cats are worth more than hay burners.”

“We’re packed to the gills. Unless Kinko and I sleep somewhere else, there’s no room for anything else.”

August pauses, tapping his pursed lips. “No,” he says finally. “Marlena would never tolerate meat on board with her horses.”

At least I know where I stand. Even if it is somewhere below the cats.