Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen

 

THE WATER AT THE BOTTOM of the horses’ buckets is murky and has oats floating in it. But it’s water all the same, so I carry the buckets outside, remove my shirt and dump what’s left over my arms, head, and chest.

“Feeling a little less than fresh, Doc?” says August.

I’m leaning over with water dripping from my hair. I wipe both eyes clear and stand up. “Sorry. I didn’t see any other water to use, and I was just going to dump it, anyway.”

“No, quite right, quite right. We can hardly expect our vet to live like a working man, can we? I’ll tell you what, Jacob. It’s a little late now, but when we get to Joliet I’ll arrange for you to start getting your own water. Performers and bosses get two buckets apiece; more, if you’re willing to grease the water man’s palm,” he says, rubbing his fingers and thumb. “I’ll also set you up with the Monday Man and see about getting you another set of clothes.”

“The Monday Man?”

“What day did your mother do the washing, Jacob?”

I stare at him. “Surely you don’t mean—”

“All that wash hanging up on lines. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

“But—”

“Never you mind, Jacob. If you don’t want to know the answer to a question, don’t ask. And don’t use that slime to clean up. Follow me.”

He leads me back across the lot to one of only three tents left standing. Inside are hundreds of buckets, lined up two deep in front of trunks and clothes racks, with names or initials painted on the sides. Men in various states of undress are using them to bathe and shave.

“Here,” he says, pointing at a pair of buckets. “Use these.”

“But what about Walter?” I ask, reading the name from the side of one of them.

“Oh, I know Walter. He’ll understand. Got a razor?”

“No.”

“I have some back there,” he says, pointing across the tent. “At the far end. They’re labeled with my name. Hurry up though—I’m guessing we’ll be out of here in another half an hour.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “I’ll leave a shirt for you in the stock car.”

WHEN I RETURN to the stock car, Silver Star is against the far wall in knee-deep straw. His eyes are glassy, his heart rate high.

The other horses are still outside, so I get my first good look at the place. It has sixteen standing stalls, which are formed by dividers that swing across after each horse is led in. If the car hadn’t been adulterated for the mysterious and missing goats, it would hold thirty-two horses.

I find a clean white shirt laid across the end of Kinko’s cot. I strip out of my old one and toss it onto the horse blanket in the corner. Before I put the new shirt on, I bring it to my nose, grateful for the scent of laundry soap.

As I’m buttoning it, Kinko’s books catch my eye. They’re sitting on the crate beside the kerosene lamp. I tuck in my shirt, sit on the cot, and reach for the top one.

It’s the complete works of Shakespeare. Underneath is a collection of Wordsworth poems, a Bible, and a book of plays by Oscar Wilde. A few small comic books are hidden inside the front cover of the Shakespeare. I recognize them immediately. They’re eight-pagers.

I flip one open. A crudely drawn Olive Oyl lies on a bed with her legs open, naked but for her shoes. She spreads herself with her fingers. Popeye appears in a thought bubble above her head, with a bulging erection that reaches to his chin. Wimpy, with an equally enormous erection, peers through the window.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I drop the comic, then bend quickly to retrieve it.

“Just leave it the hell alone!” says Kinko, storming over and snatching it from my hands. “And get the hell off my bed!”

I leap up.

“Look here, pal,” he says, reaching up to jab his finger into my chest. “I’m not exactly thrilled about having to bunk with you, but apparently I don’t have a choice in the matter. But you better believe I have a choice about whether you mess with my stuff.”

He is unshaven, his blue eyes burning in a face that is the color of beets.

“You’re right,” I stammer. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched your things.”

“Listen, pisshead. I had a nice gig going here until you came along. Plus I’m in a bad mood anyway. Some asshole used my water today, so you’d best stay out of my way. I may be short, but don’t think I can’t take you.”

My eyes widen. I recover but not soon enough.

His eyes narrow to slits. He scans the shirt, my clean-shaven face. He chucks the eight-pager onto his cot. “Aw hell. Haven’t you done enough already?”

“I’m sorry. Honest to God, I didn’t know it was yours. August said I could use it.”

“Did he also say you could go through my stuff?”

I pause, embarrassed. “No.”

He gathers his books and stuffs them into the crate.

“Kinko—Walter—I’m sorry.”

“That’s Kinko to you, pal. Only my friends call me Walter.”

I walk to the corner and sink down on my horse blanket. Kinko helps Queenie onto the bed and lies down beside her, staring so pointedly at the ceiling I half-expect it to start smoldering.

BEFORE LONG, THE TRAIN pulls out. A few dozen angry men chase us for a while, swinging pitchforks and baseball bats, although it’s mostly for the benefit of the tale they’ll get to tell at dinner tonight. If they had really wanted a fight there was plenty of time before we pulled out.

It’s not that I can’t see their point—their wives and children had been looking forward to the circus for days, and they themselves had probably been looking forward to some of the other entertainments rumored to be available in the back of our lot. And now, instead of sampling the charms of the magnificent Barbara, they’ll have to content themselves with their eight-pagers. I can see why a guy might get steamed.

Kinko and I clatter along in hostile silence as the train gets up to speed. He lies on his cot, reading. Queenie rests her head on his socks. Mostly she sleeps, but whenever she’s awake, she watches me. I sit on the horse blanket, bone-weary but not yet tired enough to lie down and suffer the indignities of vermin and mildew.

At what should be dinnertime, I get up and stretch. Kinko’s eyes dart over from behind his book, and then back to the text.

I walk out to the horses and stand looking over their alternating black and white backs. When we reloaded them, we moved everyone up to give Silver Star all four empty stalls’ worth of space. Even though the rest of the horses are now in unfamiliar slots, they seem largely unperturbed, probably because we loaded them in the same order. The names scratched into the posts no longer match the occupants, but I can extrapolate who’s who. The fourth horse in is Blackie. I wonder if his personality is anything like his human namesake’s.

I can’t see Silver Star, which means he must be lying down. That’s both good and bad: good, because it keeps the weight off his feet, and bad because it means he’s in enough pain he doesn’t want to stand. Because of the way the stalls are constructed, I can’t check on him until we stop and unload the other horses.

I sit across from the open door and watch the landscape pass until it gets dark. Eventually I slide down and fall asleep.

It seems like only minutes later when the brakes begin screeching. Almost immediately, the door to the goat room opens and Kinko and Queenie come out into the rough foyer. Kinko leans one shoulder against the wall, hands pushed deep in his pockets and ignoring me studiously. When we finally come to a stop, he jumps to the ground, turns, and claps twice. Queenie leaps into his arms and they disappear.

I climb to my feet and peer out the open door.

We’re on a siding in the middle of nowhere. The other two sections of train are also stopped, stretched out before us on the track, a half mile between each.

People climb down from the train in the early morning light. The performers stretch grumpily and gather in groups to talk and smoke as the workmen drop ramps and unload stock.

August and his men arrive within minutes.

“Joe, you deal with the monkeys,” says August. “Pete, Otis, unload the hay burners and get them watered, will you? Use the stream instead of troughs. We’re conserving water.”

“But don’t unload Silver Star,” I say.

There’s a long silence. The men look first at me and then at August, whose gaze is steely.

“Yes,” August finally says. “That’s right. Don’t unload Silver Star.”

He turns and walks away. The other men regard me with wide eyes.

I jog a little to catch up with August. “I’m sorry,” I say, falling into stride beside him. “I didn’t mean to give orders.”

He stops in front of the camel car and slides the door open. We’re greeted by the grunts and complaints of distressed dromedaries.

“That’s all right, my boy,” August says cheerily, slinging a bucket of meat at me. “You can help me feed the cats.” I catch the bucket’s thin metal handle. A cloud of angry flies rises from it.

“Oh my God,” I say. I set the bucket down and turn away, retching. I wipe tears from my eyes, still gagging. “August, we can’t feed them this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s gone off.”

There’s no answer. I turn and find that August has set a second bucket beside me and left. He’s marching up the tracks carting another two buckets. I grab mine and catch up.

“It’s putrid. Surely the cats won’t eat this,” I continue.

“Let’s hope they do. Otherwise, we’ll have to make some hard decisions.”

“Huh?”

“We’re still a long way from Joliet, and, alas, we’re out of goats.”

I am too stunned to answer.

When we reach the second section of the train, August hops up onto a flat car and props open the sides of two cat dens. He opens the padlocks, leaves them hanging on the doors, and jumps down to the gravel.

“Go on then,” he says, thumping me on the back.

“What?”

“They get a bucket each. Go on,” he urges.

I climb reluctantly onto the bed of the flat car. The odor of cat urine is overwhelming. August hands me the buckets of meat, one at a time. I set them on the weathered wooden boards, trying not to breathe.

The cat dens have two compartments each: to my left is a pair of lions. To my right, a tiger and a panther. All four are massive. They lift their heads, sniffing, their whiskers twitching.

“Well, go on then,” says August.

“What do I do, just open the door and toss it in?”

“Unless you can think of a better way.”

The tiger rises, six hundred glorious pounds of black, orange, and white. His head is huge, his whiskers long. He comes to the door, swings around, and walks away. When he returns, he growls and swipes at the latch. The padlock rattles against the bars.

“You can start with Rex,” says August, pointing at the lions, which are also pacing. “That’s him on the left.”

Rex is considerably smaller than the tiger, with mats in his mane and ribs showing under his dull coat. I steel myself and reach for a bucket.

“Wait,” says August, pointing at a different bucket. “Not that one. This one.”

I can’t see the difference, but since I’ve already ascertained that it’s a bad idea to argue with August, I oblige.

When the cat sees me coming, he lunges at the door. I freeze.

“What’s the matter, Jacob?”

I turn around. August’s face is glowing.

“You’re not afraid of Rex, are you?” he continues. “He’s just a widdle kitty cat”

Rex pauses to rub his mangy coat against the bars at the front of the cage.

With fumbling fingers, I remove the padlock and lay it by my feet. Then I lift the bucket and wait. The next time Rex turns away from the door, I swing it open.

Before I can tip the meat out, his huge jaws chomp down on my arm. I scream. The bucket crashes to the floor, splattering chopped entrails everywhere. The cat drops off my arm and pounces on the meat.

I slam the door and hold it shut with my knee while I check whether I still have an arm. I do. It is slick with saliva and as red as if I had dunked it in boiling water, but the skin isn’t broken. A moment later, I realize August is laughing uproariously behind me.

I turn to him. “What the hell is wrong with you? You think that’s funny?”

“I do, yes,” says August, making no effort to contain his mirth.

“You’re seriously fucked, you know that?” I jump down from the flat car, check my intact arm once more, and stalk off.

“Jacob, wait,” laughs August, coming up behind me. “Don’t be sore. I was just having a little fun with you.”

“What fun? I could have lost my arm!”

“He hasn’t got any teeth.”

I halt, staring at the gravel beneath my feet as this fact sinks in. Then I continue walking. This time, August doesn’t follow.

Furious, I head for the stream and kneel beside a couple of men watering zebras. One of the zebras spooks, barking and throwing his striped muzzle high in the air. The man holding the lead rope shoots a succession of glances at me as he struggles to maintain control. “Goddammit!” he shouts. “What is that? Is that blood?”

I look down. I am spattered with blood from the entrails. “Yes,” I say. “I was feeding the cats.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? You trying to get me killed?”

I walk downstream, looking back until the zebra calms down. Then I crouch by the water to rinse the blood and cat saliva from my arms.

Eventually I head back to the second section of the train. Diamond Joe is up on a flat, next to a chimp den. The sleeves of his gray shirt are rolled up, exposing hairy, muscled arms. The chimp sits on his haunches, eating fistfuls of cereal mixed with fruit and watching us with shiny black eyes.

“Need help?” I ask.

“Naw. About done, I think. I hear August got you with old Rex.”

I look up, prepared to be angry. But Joe’s not smiling.

“Watch yourself,” he says. “Rex might not take your arm, but Leo will. You can bet on that. Don’t know why August asked you to do it anyway. Clive is the cat man. Unless he wanted to make a point.” He pauses, reaches into the den, and touches fingers with the chimp before shutting the door. Then he jumps down from the flat. “Look, I’m only going to say this once. August’s a funny one, and I don’t mean funny ha-ha. You be careful. He don’t like no one questioning his authority. And he has his moments, if you know what I mean.”

“I believe I do.”

“No, I don’t think you do. But you will. Say, you eaten yet?”

“No.”

He points up the track to the Flying Squadron. There are tables set up alongside the track. “Cookhouse crew got up a breakfast of sorts. Also put up some dukey boxes. Make sure you grab one, ’cuz that probably means we’re not stopping again until tonight. Get it while the getting’s good, I always say.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I RETURN TO THE stock car with my dukey box, which contains a ham sandwich, apple, and two bottles of sarsaparilla. When I see Marlena sitting in the straw beside Silver Star, I set my dukey box down and walk slowly toward her.

Silver Star lies on his side, his flanks heaving, his respiration shallow and fast. Marlena sits at his head with her legs curled beneath her.

“He’s not any better, is he?” she says, looking up at me.

I shake my head.

“I don’t understand how this could happen so fast.” Her voice is tiny and hollow, and it occurs to me that she’s probably going to cry.

I crouch beside her. “Sometimes it just does. It’s not because of anything you did, though.”

She strokes his face, running her fingers around his dished cheek and down under his chin. His eyes flicker.

“Is there anything else we can do for him?” she asks.

“Short of getting him off the train, no. Even under the best of circumstances, there’s not a lot you can do but take them off their feed and pray.”

She glances at me and does a double take when she sees my arm. “Oh my God. What happened to you?”

I look down. “Oh, that. It’s nothing.”

“No it’s not,” she says, climbing to her knees. She takes my forearm in her hands and moves it to catch the sunlight coming in through the slats. “It looks new. It’s going to be a heck of a bruise. Does this hurt?” She takes the back of my arm in one hand and runs the other over the blue patch that’s spreading beneath my skin. Her palm is cool and smooth, and leaves my hair standing on end.

I close my eyes and swallow hard. “No, really, I’m—”

A whistle blows, and she looks toward the door. I take the opportunity to extricate my arm and rise.

“Twen-n-n-n-n-n-n-nty minutes!” bellows a deep voice from somewhere near the front of the train. “Twen-n-n-n-n-n-n-nty minutes to push-off!”

Joe pokes his head through the open doorway. “Come on! We gotta load these animals! Oh, sorry ma’am,” he says, tipping his hat to Marlena. “I didn’t see you there.”

“That’s okay, Joe.”

Joe stands awkwardly in the doorway, waiting. “It’s just that we’ve got to do it now,” he says in desperation.

“Go ahead,” says Marlena. “I’m going to ride this leg with Silver Star.”

“You can’t do that,” I say quickly.

She looks up at me, her throat elongated and pale. “Why ever not?”

“Because once we get the other horses loaded you’ll be trapped back here.”

“That’s all right.”

“What if something happens?”

“Nothing’s going to happen. And if it does, I’ll climb over them.” She settles into the straw, curling her legs back under her.

“I don’t know,” I say doubtfully. But Marlena is gazing at Silver Star with an expression that makes it perfectly clear she’s not budging.

I look back at Joe, who raises his hands in a gesture of exasperation and surrender.

After a final glance at Marlena, I swing the stall divider into place and help load the rest of the horses.

DIAMOND JOE IS RIGHT about the long haul. It’s early evening before we stop again.

Kinko and I haven’t exchanged a word since we left Saratoga Springs. He clearly hates me. Not that I blame him—August set it up that way, although I don’t suppose there’s any point in trying to explain that to him.

I stay up front with the horses to let him have some privacy. That, and I’m still nervous at the thought of Marlena trapped at the end of a row of thousand-pound animals.

When the train stops she climbs nimbly over their backs and drops to the floor. When Kinko emerges from the goat room, his eyes crinkle in momentary alarm. Then they shift from Marlena to the open door with studied indifference.

Pete, Otis, and I unload and water the ring stock, camels, and llamas. Diamond Joe, Clive, and a handful of cage hands head up to the second section of the train to deal with the animals in dens. August is nowhere to be seen.

After we get the animals back on board, I climb into the stock car and poke my head into the room.

Kinko sits cross-legged on the bed. Queenie sniffs a bedroll that has replaced the infested horse blanket. Sitting on top is a neatly folded red plaid blanket and a pillow in a smooth white case. A square sheet of cardboard lies in the center of the pillow. When I lean over to pick it up, Queenie leaps as though I’ve kicked her.

Mr. and Mrs. August Rosenbluth request the pleasure of your immediate presence in stateroom 3, car 48, for cocktails, followed by a late dinner.

I look up in surprise. Kinko is staring daggers at me.

“You wasted no time ingratiating yourself, did you?” he says.

 

 

Seven

The cars are not sequentially numbered, and it takes me a while to find car 48. It is painted a deep burgundy and trimmed with foot-tall gold lettering trumpeting BENZINI BROS MOST SPECTACULAR SHOW ON EARTH. Just beneath that, visible only in relief under the shiny fresh paint, is another name: CHRISTY BROS CIRCUS.

“Jacob!” Marlena’s voice floats from a window. A few seconds later she appears on the platform at the end, swinging out from the handrail so that her skirt swirls around her. “Jacob! Oh, I’m so glad you could make it. Please come in!”

“Thanks,” I say, glancing around. I climb up and follow her down the interior passageway and through the second door.

Stateroom 3 is glorious as well as a misnomer—it constitutes half the car, and contains at least one additional room, which is cordoned off with a thick velvet curtain. The main room is paneled in walnut and outfitted with damask furniture, a dinette, and a Pullman kitchen.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” says Marlena, waving me toward one of the chairs. “August will be along in a minute.”

“Thank you,” I say.

She sits opposite me.

“Oh,” she says leaping up again. “Where are my manners? Would you like a beer?”

“Thank you,” I say. “That would be swell.”

She flutters past me to an icebox.

“Mrs. Rosenbluth, can I ask you something?”

“Oh, please, call me Marlena,” she says, popping the bottle cap. She tips a tall glass and pours beer slowly down its side, avoiding a foam head. “And yes, by all means. Ask away.” She hands me the glass, and then returns to get another.

“How is it that everyone on this train has so much alcohol?”

“We always head to Canada at the beginning of the season,” she says, taking her seat again. “Their laws are much more civilized. Cheers,” she says, holding out her glass.

I touch mine to hers and take a sip. It’s a cold, clean lager. Magnificent. “Don’t the border guards check?”

“We put the booze in with the camels,” she says.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I say.

“Camels spit.”

I nearly spurt beer through my nose. She giggles too, and brings a hand demurely to her mouth. Then she sighs and puts her beer down. “Jacob?”

“Yes?”

“August told me about what happened this morning.”

I glance at my bruised arm.

“He feels terrible. He likes you. He really does. It’s just . . . Well, it’s complicated.” She looks into her lap, blushing.

“Hey, it’s nothing,” I say. “It’s fine.”

“Jacob!” shouts August from behind me. “My dear fellow! So glad you could join our little soirée. I see Marlena has set you up with a drinky-poo; has she shown you the dressing room yet?”

“The dressing room?”

“Marlena,” he says, turning and shaking his head sadly. He waggles a finger in reprimand. “Tsk tsk, darling.”

“Oh!” she says, leaping to her feet. “I completely forgot!”

August walks to the velvet curtain and whisks it aside.

“Ta-dah!”

There are three outfits lying side by side on the bed. Two tuxedos, complete with shoes, and a beautiful rose silk dress with beading on its neck and hemline.

Marlena squeals, clapping her hands in delight. She rushes to the bed and grabs the dress, pressing it to her body and twirling.

I turn to August. “These aren’t from the Monday Man—”

“A tux on a wash line? No, Jacob. Being equestrian director has the odd perk. You can clean up in there,” he says, pointing to a polished wooden door. “Marlena and I will change out here. Nothing we haven’t seen before, eh darling?” he says.

She grabs a rose silk shoe by the heel and chucks it at him.

The last thing I see as I shut the bathroom door is a tangle of feet toppling forward onto the bed.

When I come back out, Marlena and August are the picture of dignity, hovering in the background as three white-gloved waiters fuss with a small wheeled table and silver-domed platters.

The neckline of Marlena’s dress barely covers her shoulders, exposing her collarbone and a slim bra strap. She follows my gaze and tucks the strap back under the material, blushing once again.

The dinner is sublime: We start with oyster bisque and follow with prime rib, boiled potatoes, and asparagus in cream. Then comes lobster salad. By the time dessert appears—English plum pudding with brandy sauce—I don’t think I can take another bite. And yet a few minutes later I find myself scraping my plate with my spoon.

“Apparently Jacob doesn’t find dinner up to snuff,” August says in a slow drawl.

I freeze midscrape.

Then he and Marlena dissolve into fits of giggles. I set my spoon down, mortified.

“No, no, my boy, I’m joking—obviously,” he chortles, leaning over to pat my hand. “Eat. Enjoy yourself. Here, have some more,” he says.

“No, I couldn’t possibly.”

“Well, have some more wine then,” he says, refilling my glass without waiting for a response.

August is gracious, charming, and mischievous—so much so that as the evening wears on I begin to think the incident with Rex was just a joke gone awry. His face glows with wine and sentiment as he regales me with the tale of how he wooed Marlena. Of how he recognized her powerful way with horses the very moment she entered his menagerie tent three years before—sensed it from the horses themselves. And how, to the great distress of Uncle Al, he refused to budge until he had swept her off her feet and married her.

“It took some doing,” says August, emptying the remains of one champagne bottle into my glass and then reaching for another. “Marlena’s no pushover, plus she was practically engaged at the time. But this beats being the wife of a stuffy banker, doesn’t it, darling? At any rate, it’s what she was born to do. Not everyone can work with liberty horses. It’s a God-given talent, a sixth sense, if you will. This girl speaks horse, and believe me, they listen.”

Four hours and six bottles into the evening, August and Marlena dance to “Maybe It’s the Moon,” while I lounge in an upholstered chair with my right leg draped over its arm. August twirls Marlena around and then stops with her extended from the end of his straightened arm. He’s weaving, his dark hair tousled. His bow tie trails from either side of his collar and the first few buttons of his shirt are undone. He stares at Marlena with such intensity he looks like a different man.

“What’s the matter?” says Marlena. “Auggie? Are you all right?”

He continues to stare into her face, cocking his head as though evaluating her. The edge of his lip curls. He starts to nod, slowly, barely moving his head.

Marlena’s eyes grow wide. She tries to step backward, but he catches her chin with his hand.

I sit forward, suddenly on full alert.

August stares for a moment longer, his eyes shiny and hard. Then his face transforms again, becoming so sloppy that for a moment I think he’s going to burst into tears. He pulls her to him by the chin and kisses her full on the lips. Then he steers himself into the bedroom and collapses face first onto the bed.

“Excuse me a moment,” Marlena says.

She goes into the bedroom and rolls him over so he’s sprawled across the center of the bed. She removes his shoes and drops them to the floor. When she comes out, she pulls the velvet curtain shut and immediately changes her mind. She pulls it open again, turns off the radio, and sits opposite me.

A snore of kingly proportions rumbles from the bedroom.

My head is buzzing. I am entirely drunk.

“What the hell was that?” I ask.

“What?” Marlena kicks off her shoes, crosses her legs, and leans forward to rub the arch of her foot. August’s fingers have left red marks on her chin.

“That,” I sputter. “Just now. When you were dancing.”

She looks up sharply. Her face contorts, and for a moment I’m afraid she’s going to cry. Then she turns to the window and holds a finger to her lips. She is silent for almost half a minute.

“You have to understand something about Auggie,” she says, “and I don’t quite know how to explain it.”

I lean forward. “Try.”

“He’s . . . mercurial. He’s capable of being the most charming man on earth. Like tonight.”

I wait for her to continue. “And . . . ?”

She leans back in her chair. “And, well, he has . . . moments. Like today.”

“What about today?”

“He nearly fed you to a cat.”

“Oh. That. I can’t say I was thrilled, but I was hardly in danger. Rex has no teeth.”

“No, but he’s four hundred pounds and he has claws,” she says quietly.

I set my wineglass on the table as the enormity of this sinks in. Marlena pauses, then lifts her eyes to meet mine. “Jankowski is a Polish name, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Poles do not, in general, like Jews.”

“I didn’t realize August was Jewish.”

“With a name like Rosenbluth?” she says. She looks at her fingers, twisting them in her lap. “My family is Catholic. They disowned me when they found out.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Although I’m not surprised.”

She looks up sharply.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “I’m not . . . like that.”

An uncomfortable silence stretches between us.

“So why am I here?” I finally ask. My drunken brain is unable to process all this.

“I wanted to smooth things over.”

“You did? He didn’t want me here?”

“No, of course he did. He wanted to make it up to you, too, but it’s harder for him. He can’t help his little moments. They embarrass him. The best thing to do is pretend they didn’t happen.” She sniffs and turns to me with a tight smile. “And we had a lovely time, didn’t we?”

“Yes. Dinner was lovely. Thank you.”

As yet another silence engulfs us, it dawns on me that unless I want to try leaping across train cars drunk and in the dead of night, I’ll be sleeping right where I am.

“Please, Jacob,” says Marlena. “I do so want things to be all right between us. August is simply delighted you’ve joined us. And so is Uncle Al.”

“And why is that, exactly?”

“Uncle Al was touchy about not having a vet, and then out of blue, here you are, from an Ivy League school no less.”

I stare, still trying to comprehend.

“Ringling has a vet,” Marlena continues, “and being like Ringling makes Uncle Al happy.”

“I thought he hated Ringling.”

“Darling, he wants to be Ringling.”

I lean my head back and shut my eyes, but this results in disastrous spinning, so I open them again and try to focus on the feet dangling from the end of the bed.

WHEN I WAKE UP, the train has stopped—can I really have slept through the screeching brakes? The sun is shining on me through the window, and my brain pounds against my skull. My eyes ache and my mouth tastes like a sewer.

I stagger to my feet and glance into the bedroom. August is curled around Marlena, his arm lying across her. They are on top of the bedspread, still fully dressed.

I get a few odd looks when I emerge from car 48 dressed in a tux with my other clothes tucked under my arm. At this end of the train, where most of the onlookers are performers, I am regarded with frosty amusement. As I pass the working men’s sleepers, the glances become harder, more suspicious.

I climb gingerly into the stock car and push open the door of the little room.

Kinko is sitting on the edge of his cot, an eight-pager in one hand and his penis in the other. He stops midstroke, its slick purple head extending beyond his fist. There’s a heartbeat of silence followed by the whoosh of an empty Coke bottle flying at my head. I duck.

“Get out!” Kinko screams as the bottle explodes against the doorframe behind me. He leaps up, causing his erection to bounce wildly. “Get the hell out!” He lobs another bottle at me.

I turn to the door, shielding my head and dropping my clothes. I hear a zipper running up, and a moment later the complete works of Shakespeare smash into the wall beside me. “Okay, okay!” I shout. “I’m leaving!”

I pull the door shut behind me and lean against the wall. The curses continue unabated.

Otis appears outside the stock car. He looks in alarm at the closed door and then shrugs. “Hey, fancy boy,” he says. “You gonna help us with these animals or what?”

“Sure. Of course.” I jump to the ground.

He stares at me.

“What?” I say.

“Ain’t you gonna change out of the monkey suit first?”

I glance back at the closed door. Something heavy slams against the interior wall. “Uh, no. I think I’ll stay like I am for the time being.”

“Your call. Clive’s cleaned out the cats. He wants us to bring the meat.”