Pride (28 page)

He bites into the sandwich and ketchup drips on the table and slides across his hand. He licks his fingers. He isn't looking up at Cap or Sally; concentrating on his eating. He shifts his butt on the box, farts. It's done automatically as if part of some ritual. Cap looks across at Sally; she's daintily constructing a sandwich; he turns back to Jimmy.

“Gees, Jimmy, even if we have to live like animals let's not overdo it, huh?”

Jimmy takes a swig from the common beer bottle, glugs down about a third; wipes his mouth.

“Jesus! Eat nothin' but beans and crap like this all the time; anybody's gonna start fartin'. It's lucky I'm not pukin' all over the place.”

In the background Tuffy is roaring, tapering off with a series of cough-like wheezes. Jimmy turns his head toward the lion cage and spits.

“It's for sure
that
SOB don't hold nothin' back. Piss, shit, fart, roar, whatever comes into his head, he just does. I hate that overgrown alley cat!”

Sally takes a small bite from her sandwich, chews it carefully, swallows. She looks at Cap.

“Honest, Cap; if Tuffy lets off another one of his stink bombs when we're up there on the wall the way he did last night, I'm liable to pass out and drive over the edge. It's really bad. And not only that, his breath smells like a sewer. When he turns toward me and gives off one of his roars, I swear I could light what comes out of his mouth. It's awful.”

Cap doesn't say anything for several seconds. He looks at his hands, folds them on the board serving as a table.

“I guess if you were eating garbage you wouldn't smell so hot either.”

Sally stands up quickly, knocking over her apple crate, brushing crumbs from her lap. She's dressed in dirty men's white coveralls pulled over a frayed sweater. She still has a slim yet full figure, but her face is set, marks of dissatisfaction, disappointment beginning to show. The peroxiding and heavy makeup have taken their toll on her fresh good looks.

“What d'ya think this stuff here is, Cap?”

She puts her sandwich on the table, her hands on either side. She stares down at herself, overalls, sweater, worn slippers. She pushes the ragged edges of her sweater sleeves up over her elbows.

“Me, ha! What a jerk. I run off from a good job with a hotshot race driver and now I wind up playing driver to a lousy, stinking lion. I gave up all that for this; if I'd've stayed on I'd be a supervisor by now, and I'm telling you, that's
good
money!”

Jimmy looks at Sally, a cool, rejecting, questioning look. He takes another bite of his sandwich, shoves it into the corner of his mouth, uses one finger to dislodge some bread caught in his teeth.

“Ya know, I don't wanna go to Florida anyway. I'm sick of your fart-face lion and this whole crappy setup. The guy who runs that gas station outside town says I can have a job there pumping gas into cars and fixing flat tires. I'm just gonna hole up here in Wildwood for the winter; maybe I'll join the act again when you come next summer. You can do without me, long's you have Tuffy. You'll be playing mostly in the sticks anyway down there; these rednecks don't know the difference. Satan, the Dare-Devil Lion, is good enough for them hicks.”

Sally looks quickly over at Jimmy, then at Cap. She's confused, frightened.

“Don't do it, Jimmy. You can't quit us now; you
make
this show. Without you, it's nothing but an animal act, like seals or poodle dogs. Besides you'll never stick it out here. Wildwood's canned death in winter, ask anybody.”

Cap's embarrassed by Sally's vehemence, her obvious fright, despair, at the idea of Jimmy leaving. He's even more convinced that if Jimmy leaves she'll take off, too. He spreads his hands on the table, lifts his palms, stands his hands on their fingertips.

“I'll tell you one thing, Jimmy; Murph isn't exactly one of your biggest fans. Do whatever you want; we'll make out somehow. But if I were you, I'd think twice before I stayed on here in Wildwood.”

Jimmy shoves the last of his sandwich in his mouth. He stands up, stretches, yawns, forces another fart.

“The hell with Murphy! Just 'cause I banged some of the local jail bait, he's got me marked down as public enemy number one. Folks around here should pay me for keeping these little twits home, keep 'em from running away. I give what they want, a good bang, and it doesn't cost them a cent; best damned medicine in the world for a wild-assed, teenaged girl.”

He picks up his knife, scrapes some ketchup off the table, and licks it again. Tuffy roars in the background. Jimmy turns toward the lion cage, plants his feet, throws his knife at the Wall of Death; it clatters to the floor of the pit. He shakes his fist.

“Shut up, bush face!!”

He turns back to Cap and Sally, still holding up his fist.

“You know, I'm gonna kill that yella-eyed tomcat if I stay around here much longer. It's him or me.

“Didja ever look into them eyes? He's just waiting his chance. He'd like to rip all of us up, me first, turn us all into cat food. But, goddamn it, he sure as hell ain't gonna get me.”

Jimmy walks over to pick up his knife. Cap starts clearing off the makeshift table. He carries the bread, the baloney wrapped in waxed paper, the milk, the knives over to the black box, stores them. He lifts the board and moves the boxes so he can open the trap door in the bottom of the pit. He lowers the boxes, including the black one, the board, everything, into the hole in the pit, then slides the trap door into place.

Sally is leaning against the wall, trying to pull herself together. She looks at Jimmy, then at Cap.

“Tuffy's beginning to really scare me, Cap. Last night, all the time we were up on the wall, and I was trying to keep speed, hold it straight, he kept looking at me. I could see him from the corner of my eyes. He'd look at me and then roar his stinking roar. I could smell him, not just his sewer mouth and his farts; I could smell the lion in him, a thick, deep, animal smell. I was afraid to look him in the eyes. He knows I'm afraid, Cap, and he's hungry. I think he's beginning to see me as food.”

Cap's pulling off his garbage-gathering clothes and getting into the outfit he wears for the act, black leather trousers, a slightly stained wide-sleeved tight-cuffed silk shirt. Jimmy's doing the same thing on the other side of the room. They're getting ready to put on their demonstration out on the platform.

Cap stops a minute, looks at Sally. “It isn't your time of month, is it?”

Sally stares back at Cap, embarrassed, resistant, turns her head away.

“No, it isn't. That isn't it.”

Cap is tightening the laces through the hooks at the top of his left boot, his good leg. He half mumbles to himself: “I'd be the last one around here to know.”

Cap finishes dressing. He starts sweeping out the pit. Jimmy has pushed his motorcycle through the small door and up a ramp onto the outside stage opening to the boardwalk. Cap carefully sweeps where the curve of the pit bottom turns up onto the wall. It's here where there's the most danger of slipping. The wall is blackened from the skidding of tires and exhaust fumes.

“Well, Sally, maybe we'll have some takers today. Then, I'll fill Tuffy up with meat, that truck up with gas, and we'll be on our way.”

Sally has turned her back on Cap. She has her arms spread out against the wall, her face to it. She's crying.

“Stop it, Cap! Stop kidding yourself! There's nobody here in Wildwood; it's October. We should've been gone a month ago. If we make another fifty bucks this whole week it'll be a miracle.”

Cap doesn't say anything. He doesn't even look over at Sally. He grabs the handlebars of his motorcycle and starts pushing it up toward the door after Jimmy. Sally closes the door behind him.

Absent-mindedly, still sobbing, she strips off the overalls and her sweater. She's wearing her orchid spangled costume underneath. She rolls the sweater and overalls into a ball, slides them through the trap door. She goes to another small box in the corner. Out of it she takes a brush and mirror. The mirror is about six by eight inches with a small fold-down metal stand. She stands it on the floor of the pit. She fluffs out her hair, using a small hand mirror to see the back and sides.

Alone, in the dim light, she turns slowly, looking at herself from all angles. She runs each hand carefully over her hips, slaps them a few times, then slides her fingertips down the backs of her thighs. After several minutes, she puts her mirrors and brush back in the box, pushes it under the lip of the trap door and latches the trap tight.

She stands in the center of the surrounding walls, takes a deep breath, goes over, lifts a roll of tickets and a wrap-around-waist apron with pockets from a hook on the wall. She lifts the hook as well, puts it into the sagging pocket of the apron, then goes out the same door Jimmy and Cap used.

T
he next morning I'm still asleep when I feel something rough rubbing my nose and cheek. I open my eyes and it's Cannibal. Somehow she got out of her box during the night, climbed up the side of my bed, and crawled on top of me. I rub my hand down her back, and she doesn't try to bite me. With both hands, I rub her under the ears. I'm wondering how long she's been out of the box and if she's made a mess anywhere. I hold her in my hand, slowly swing my legs out of bed, and put my feet on the linoleum floor. I look around everywhere, especially under the beds, but don't see anything. I don't smell anything either. Cannibal has her own special smell when she's up close to my face, but that's different. Her fur smell is like the inside of a drawer that's been closed a long time in a hot room.

She's wakened me so I can take her outside, I'm sure of it. We don't have a sandbox here for her; there was no way to carry it with us in the car. I slip on my bathing suit, a shirt, and sweater, then pull on my pants and decide not to wear shoes. I take the towel that's mine from where it's drying over the end of my bed. The sun is just coming up outside and shining through the window onto my pillow.

I think of waking Mom to tell her I'm taking Cannibal out to do her business, but she and Dad look so comfortable all curled around each other I don't want to wake them. I look over to see if Laurel's awake but she's asleep and sucking her fingers.

Gosh, I went down to the boardwalk alone, or almost alone, with Laurel last night. They can't mind too much if I go out so Cannibal won't make a mess.

I open the door and look back to see if it wakes anybody up. They all stay asleep. I hold Cannibal in her box in one hand and slowly close the door to see if anybody wakes up but there's nobody moving. I carefully go along the balcony and down the steps. I cross the courtyard and out into the street.

It's beautiful and quiet. It must be trash day because there are trash and garbage cans in front of all the houses, or maybe they collect trash every day here. I haven't seen any alleys in Wildwood yet; maybe there're some farther inland.

I walk toward the ocean, looking into trashcans as I go. I don't see anything, mostly only newspapers and garbage. There aren't any ashes. I decide to take Cannibal right down to the beach, where there's all the sand in the world.

I cross one big street and there isn't a car in sight. There are streetcar tracks but I don't see any streetcar either. Near the boardwalk, I see one man with a cap on, hunched over, going through trash barrels with a burlap sack between his legs. I guess the Depression's even hit here. Dad says, “Happy Days Are Here Again” and the Depression's over, but I'm not so sure. A lot of kids at school are still on relief or their dads are working for the WPA. Mrs. Loughlin's son, who's only eighteen, just went into the CCC, which is almost like going into jail.

I get to the beach and there's nobody there. It's empty and cold when I go under the boardwalk. On the other side, the sun's just coming over the ocean; it looks as if it's only about two feet above the water but it must be hundreds of miles actually; it's so far away. I keep Cannibal in the box until I get down to the ripples of the surf. I want to see if she'll fight waves again, and I want to feel the water on my feet.

I let Cannibal out and watch. There aren't many strong waves and Cannibal walks along the edge of the water, then up onto the dry sand, where she turns around about five times then squats and does her business. Such a smart cat. I dig a hole, push the mess in, and cover it up.

I walk backward and look at my footsteps in the sand. My shadow is long like a giant, at least five times as tall as I am. Then Cannibal notices her shadow and rears up to fight it. It's one of those mornings when shadows look very important, almost bluish or purplish against the sand color. Every bump from footsteps has a long shadow, too, so the sand looks like little mountains.

There are birds flying over the water, seagulls, and they're hollering at each other, sweeping down on the water trying to catch fish but missing every time. There are also some kind of long-legged birds running along the edges of the water.

They run fast with short steps and shoot in after each wave, ducking down to eat something just behind the water when it goes out. Cannibal sees these birds and decides to chase one of them. She chases it right out under one of the waves. Then when the bird dashes back in, as the wave comes up the beach, Cannibal can't run fast enough and a little wave crashes on her head, tumbling her over, and she's pulled by the undertow into the deeper water. I dash down and rescue her just before she gets drowned. She's sopping wet.