Earthly Astonishments (9 page)

But the train crossed in safety and kept on chugging, spitting out smoke and soot, and joggling from side to side until Josephine’s insides were churned like new butter.

Soon after the train crossed the bridge, the landscape changed. No longer city streets and people, now there were acres of coal yards and ash pits. Josephine turned away from the window.

“Are we allowed to move about?” she asked. “Can we explore the train?”

“Surely,” said Charley. “There’s other museum folk on board too. We’re all moving out for the opening this weekend.”

Nelly stayed where she was while Charley took Josephine in hand.

“I will be your Guide to the Fantastical,” he announced, changing his voice to sound impressively like Mr. Walters. “I will show you things you have never seen before….” The train rattled terribly as he led her down the passage.

“That’s Rosie.” Charley pointed though the window of the next-door compartment. A woman, who seemed oblivious to the motion, was knitting with gray wool.

“She’s the Bearded Lady. She used to be the Fat Lady too, but she renounced buttered cake and has lost half her employ.”

“Where’s her beard?”

“She tucks it into that lacy shawl about her neck and chin. The beard is real, all right. Mr. Walters may be a honey-fuggler, trying on a trick from time to time, but Old Rosie is genuine. I tugged on those prickly whiskers when I was a kid, and she howled like a dog in a rat pit.”

He opened the door to the compartment.

“Hey, Rosie! This is Josephine. She’s the new featured exhibition.”

“How do you do?” said Josephine. Rosie nodded without stopping her needles.

Lying asleep across Rosie’s feet, his fur vibrating from the motion of the train, was an enormous dog, the color of butterscotch candy.

“That’s Barker,” said Charley “That’s the beast you’re supposed to go gallivanting about on.”

“Him?” Josephine stared. His body covered most of the floor between benches. His tail alone seemed at least half her height. How big would he be standing up?

“Hey, Barker!” called Charley. The dog opened one eye and closed it again with a slight snore. Rosie shifted her knitting needles to one hand and leaned down to give him a pat.

“He’s a good boy,” she said, clucking softly. “He’s been with me these eleven years.”

“I don’t think you have a lot to worry about, Jo,” Charley sniggered. “He doesn’t seem to be much of a stallion.”

Josephine eyed Barker’s tremendous paws, folded neatly over his nose.

“He could knock me flat with one swat!” she said.

“Well, then,” answered Charley, with sparkling eyes, “you’d best make friends with him.”

“How do I do that?”

“He likes his ears tugged on,” advised Rosie. “Just so.” She demonstrated. Josephine didn’t think she’d dare.

“Or,” said Charley, “you could let him tug on yours!”

They returned to the corridor just as the train lurched, tipping Josephine onto her backside with a thump. Charley scooped her up and held her for a moment while the train hammered on.

“Hey!” Josephine wriggled, as her cheeks flared with warmth. “I’m not a baby.”

“Don’t be wrathy! I was only saving your life.”

Charley set her down and turned away. Josephine bent over, pretending to adjust her stocking, while she cooled down. It had been a shock to find herself in Charley’s arms, but he seemed to think nothing of it. He was merely continuing the tour. He poked his neck into another compartment, pushing Josephine in front.

“This is Eddie,”

Eddie looked up from reading and smiled with friendly curiosity.

“Excuse us, Eddie. This here is Josephine. She’s the new one Mr. Walters used to fill up his amusements advertisement.”

“Ah, yes! Little Jo-Jo. It’s an honor to meet you.” Eddie bowed awkwardly from his sitting position, and blinked soft, brown eyes before returning to his book.

Josephine clutched Charley’s jacket tail as they held on in the corridor.

“He seems a comely enough gentleman.” She tried to keep her voice low and yet still be heard above the racket of the wheels. “What does Mr. Walters use him for?”

“Oh, his face is fine and likely,” said Charley, “but underneath his clothing, his skin is like a prehistoric reptile.”

“He’s the Alligator Man?”

“He’s got a horrible ailment,” Charley told her with relish. “A rare condition that makes his skin look scaley and cracked like the bark of an old tree. It’s so plug-ugly you could cry.”

Josephine looked back over her shoulder. That gentle, pleasant face was sitting atop a lizardly body? She found that she, too, could be astonished.

“Hey! Filipe! I didn’t see you at the station!” Charley punched the arm of an older boy, who tapped him back with a grin.

“Where are the snakes?” asked Charley.

“Snakes?” asked Josephine.

“They’re not allowed on the train,” answered Filipe. His accent was different from that of Nelly and Charley. “They will ride tomorrow on the roof of Mr. Walters’s carriage.”

Filipe’s dashing yellow cap barely contained his thatch of black hair. His skin was the color of coffee with milk poured into it. Next to him, Charley looked as white as a marble floor.

“Marco and Polo are pythons,” explained Charley.

“Uck,” said Josephine.

“Those snakes are so big they’d eat you for supper, Jo.”

Filipe eyed her, considering. “It’s true, I think. You are not so big as a one-year pig. This would make a good supper.”

He and Charley punched each other again, laughing out loud with their mouths wide open.

Josephine bit the inside of her lip. She felt the train shaking under her, matching the quivers of anger inside. Charley should know better than to tease about her size. How would he feel if she called him—what could she call him that would hurt? How about Paste Face? Or Ghost Boy?

“Never mind the boys, they get silly and cut shines.” Nelly was suddenly beside her. “Look here, we’ve arrived. We’ll see the ocean!”

Josephine was lifted from the train like a picnic basket and set on the platform of the Coney Island station.
She felt the ocean in the air almost like a slap, before she even saw it.

Oh, the ocean!

No one had prepared her for the ocean. She knew it was there, of course; there were oceans in books about sailing ships, and it was a spreading blue background on the map in the Academy’s geography classroom.

But no one had said the word “ocean” in an ecstatic whisper with shining eyes and clasped hands and body tilted as if feeling the salty wind.

And then she saw it for herself! A huge, glittering carpet, shifting and rolling under the summer sun, like acres of spangled silk! This ocean was here all the time? She could come every day to smell the fresh, tangy air. To hear the perpetual rumble and crash of the foaming waves. To watch the sparkle on the water, like countless floating jewels.

The sting of Charley’s teasing faded away. The whole week of being measured for fancy clothes and smiling at newspapermen disappeared.

Josephine couldn’t believe her luck. She had an ocean!

osephine’s first day of employ at the Museum IP of Earthly Astonishments in Coney Island was one she would remember for all of her life.

Nelly fed her bites of toasted bread while she dressed, because she had no stomach for the oatmeal porridge that Charley devoured each morning. During her regular exhibition hours, Mr. Walters had decreed that Josephine wear a dress of rose-colored satin with a purple petticoat and lavender stockings. If she were to fall down and give a view of her underpinnings, she’d look like a garden in full bloom!

Charley wore his customary work uniform of a black suit with a pink cravat, which made his eyes glitter like blushing crystals.

“You look about to be married, Charley O’Dooley!” said Josephine.

“Oooeee! You’re almighty comely yourself when you’re slicked up, Jo!” And when she looked in the glass propped against the wall, she had to agree. Her hair was pinned up into a real lady’s chignon, adding several years to her face. Nelly had insisted that a few curls escaping at the back were the height of fashion.

Nelly, who gave up her job at the Half-Dollar Saloon
during the summer months, would be in charge of the admissions booth at the museum. That way she could fill in as stage mother when required to help Josephine change her costumes.

On the outside walls of Walters Hall were hung enormous, painted banners, shouting to the world of the marvels that dwelt within.

and then a picture of Eddie’s scaly body beneath his grimacing face.

Charley, colored with the whitest pigment in the paint box, leered out at the customers with demonic eyes.

The portrait of Josephine showed her standing on an upturned teacup next to a flowerpot, with daisies towering over her.

The Main Promenade of Walters Hall sounded grander than it could ever be. Really, it was a long, narrow
room with low ceilings, painted a yellow that was meant to say “carnival” but said instead “no sunlight here.” Instead of brightening the hall, winking gas flames only added to the gloom.

Except during showtimes, the Astonishments were to stand at intervals along the hallway, still as stones on the beach, and let folks stare to their hearts’ content—or at least till they were pushed along by the crowd behind.

All the Strange Humans were staged indoors. The Genuine Hippopotamus and a motley flock of parrots were kept in a pen through an alley to the rear.

According to Charley, the hippopotamus had joined the company last summer. In the beginning, it was Mr. Walters’s great prize, being the only such creature to be exhibited anywhere in the state, as far as he knew.

But Potty was a great, grouchy thing, with breath that could knock down a tree. And arranging for a permanent mud puddle had proved to be a trial.

“Mr. Walters says he’s looking to find a mate for our Potty,” confided Charley. “The old stinker ought to liven up some having a lady to share his muck with. And a baby hippo would be worth its own weight in admission fees.”

It was in the alley alongside Potty’s pen where Josephine had learned to ride upon Barker’s back. Not wanting to admit to her fluttering stomach, she had asked that no one watch except the dog’s mistress, Rosie.

Rosie’s concern seemed more for Barker than for Josephine, but the Bearded Lady had been gentle enough when lifting her onto the saddle.

Josephine sat astride, her feet just level with Barker’s golden underbelly. There was a rein, but only for the look of it. Josephine’s hands held fistfuls of tawny fur at Barker’s neck, which she tried not to yank while the patient dog padded back and forth, serenaded by bleating parrots.

“Ah, Jo-Jo,” confessed Rosie, “I’d trade in my best corset for a few minutes in your place right now. I always knew my Barker was a good boy, but with you setting there on top, he looks right royal.”

“I do feel…” Josephine found herself whispering. “He makes me feel as a princess might, the way he puts his paws down so careful. Not shaking me off, but trying to help me sit tall.”

When Mr. Walters had been summoned to watch a demonstration, he bowed low and held out his hand to help Josephine dismount.

“A fine addition!” he applauded. “Another astonishing first for my Museum!”

Indoors, apart from the living exhibitions, there were several glass cases displaying what Mr. Walters claimed to be an “Impressive Selection of Collected Curiosities.”

Charley had to lift Josephine up so that she could see. There was a dried ear from an African elephant next to a glass bottle holding twelve black beetles found in the stomach of a baby in Pennsylvania.

“Uck!” laughed Josephine. “She must have been a crabby little thing.”

“What I’d like to know,” said Charley, “was whether the baby died because she had the bugs in her belly? Or whether she spat them out, one by one, and lived to be a wrinkled old lady.”