The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (25 page)

Bagg had lived his adult life surrounded by people with health plans and money for deductable payments. He had lived among people with an expectation of at least trying to fix things that went wrong with you or your children.

But
that
hadn’t always been the case.

Bagg had witnessed the form of dentistry practiced at The Summer
Farm. The whiskey pain killers
and the pliers used for rough extractions. As a little boy, he’d seen a broken arm set with wooden splints
,
no thought for an x-ray. Bad cuts
had been
splashed with soapy water
and stitched like a torn house dress.

People
hadn
’
t
intend
ed
to lose their teeth. The
ir
babies
hadn’t been
born with treatable conditions on purpose. The people who raised
Lennon
Bagg
simply
lived w
ith whatever damaged them.
As
a little boy
, he’d
never
been
told there was a Tooth Fairy, probably because you never stopped losing teeth until they were all gone.

The leathery woman
now
gumming a bottle of warm Old Milwaukee might have been the same woman who had come running into the woods toward the screaming boy
when
Bagg was just five or six
. Bagg had been
exploring a deer path in the woods up on the hill above the
Summer
Farm. He
was
either naked or wearing torn old underpants when he tripped on a cable-like vine, falling forward into an innocuous looking pile of brush. When he
went
to push himself back up, a fiery burst of unimaginable pain raced up from his right hand
, a pain
so terrible, the first screams caught in his throat and no sound came out.

The boy again tried to pull away from whatever had him, but the same electric
pain gripped his entire body.
R
each
ing
with his left hand to clear away the sticks and leaves,
Bagg
discover
ed
that
he’d been impaled squarely through the middle of his hand by a section of broken root. A bloody, half-inch
-
wide piece of wood
had
entered his palm and exited the dorsum
. It looked
like an angry finger pointing toward his face.

Little Bagg found his voice, shrieking so loud and long that he blacked
out from lack of oxygen.
P
assing out had saved young Bagg the excruciating sight of
the root
being removed, an act
he later found out was
left to the toothless old woman who had reached him first.

Even back in 1973, most anywhere in America
,
an ambulance would have been called and emergency medical technicians led jogging into the woods to perform such extr
a
ctions. But among circus folk and commune dwellers alike, when something
was
broken, you fixed it yourself. And scars
were
the lines
that
etch
ed
the events of your life.

Bagg’s eyes fluttered open to the si
ght
of
the old woman’s
straw-like white hair and
the
mass of wrinkled skin
that was
her neck. Her filthy dress had come unbuttoned and a flabby mound of warm flesh pressed against his cheek, a coarse nipple rubbed
as if offering to be suckled.
Another child waking to such a sight would
have been
convinced they were being abducted by an awful monster, some sort of wicked and perverse witch. Bagg’s eyes drifted beyond the old woman to the trees and flickering sun behind. The rhythmic bouncing of the downhill walk, combined with what was now a dull throbbing from his wound, made all the
color run out of Bagg’s world.

“It h
urts bad.
”

“We’re gonna get you all fixed u
p.
”
She smiled
down an impossibly wide, camel-like grin
that
stretch
ed
from ear
to ear. “You boys always gettin
’ into somethin’.
”

“I fell down.
”

“Yeah, everybody falls down.
”
She struggl
ed
for
breath as the deer path leveled off. “The trick is to keep gettin’ up
, boy
.
”

The old
woman delivered Bagg, white as a ghost from pain and blood loss, to the small cabin
his parents
shared with another fa
mily of three. She slipped away for a few minutes
and then returned with a squeeze bottle of dish soap, some rags, and her sewing kit.

On Fish Head Island, the people around the fire pit
had been
dirty because people who worked hard got dirty. And if you didn’t have good showers, you stayed mostly dirty. One or two had cancer
,
which would shorten their lives considerably.

The man on Bagg’s left tapped his shoulder and passed him a grease-smeared bottle. Bagg held it up
to
the yellow
,
licking flames
and caught
a glimpse of the scar on the back of his right hand. The first small sip
from the dirty bottle
carried the aroma of paint thinner but wasn’t so bad going down. He took one mor
e sip and passed it on.

Bagg sat in the light of the fire, now absently rubbing both sides of his scarred hand, feeling a bit of comfort from the storm.

Sir William, the barker who had been in charge
of riling up
the early arrivals and igniting Enrique’s cannon
fuse
,
was assigned the task
of sending volleys of fireworks out over the inlet every evening to announce
that
the show
was
about to go on. Sir William was
an anomaly a
mong most circus folk, since he
was nearly sixty and looked no m
ore than forty. He was handsome
—
as long as you
didn’t get
too close
—
with
most of his
thick head of blond hair
hidden
under
a U
.
S
.
Calvary hat he was never seen without.

Sir William had
bolted metal pipes to stakes
,
loose enough
to adjust firing height with a quick turn of the wrist. Six pipes were permanently set up near the water, giving him a clear shot at any low flying aircraft and passing boats.
To anyone within a few hundred yards at dusk, i
t was
obvious
that
something was
taking place
on the patch of ground along the inlet
, especially
when colorful flaming
balls skim
med
across your deck
and you spied
a smiling and waving man
in an odd hat standing next to
smoking launcher
s
in the distance.

S
trands
of ligh
ts were
switched on as the sun dropped behind the marsh
. The music was
cranked loud
, competing with the metallic clack of the
mini-
coaster and truck ride.
The main event was a forty minute show
of
non-stop action
. Sir William gave the first clown the
go-
ahead signal when
the last customers
were settled into the bleachers. The lights went down for a ten count then came up with two spotlights trained on a sad face clown in the center of the ring. Sneaking up from behind was a
smiling
clown, who
st
o
l
e
the
other
clown
’
s big red nose and took
off running. The sad clown
tried chasing
after the other
, but
his
enormous
feet kept tangling and
he
would fall hard
again and again
. He
resorted
to throwing
buckets of silver confetti
and firing a marshmallow gun, always missing
,
hitti
ng
surprised adults
and
laughing
children
. The clown chase
continued under the bleachers and down the narrow
a
isles,
and
bumping across spectator’s knees
. It
rais
ed
the energy
level
for
the entrance of
the zonkey
-
riding dog and
some
noisy chainsaw
jugg
l
ing
. The
slightly arthritic lion taming
was
followed by
the bear act
.

Graceful Gracie
entered from the shadows and
danced in wide circles, her pink tutu bright and shiny under the lights. She would then drop to all fours, stop
ping
to beg
a taste of cotton candy
by rolling over and playing dead in front of the bleachers, sometimes catching peanuts in her mouth.
Slim often joined her for a dance, doing the tango or the box step, depending on how much he’d had to drink.

Sir William
signaled
to
the
roustabout
at the light controls
to drop
the
blue gel over the spotlight
and then
jogged out to the center of the ring. “Ladies and gentlemen of all ages, I present to you
a
beautiful,
mysterious and
titillating talent from lands far away. T
he
alluring
gyrations of
Miss
Amira
Anne!
”
E
xotic music washed over the crowd as camera flashes
worked
a
strobe-
like effect
on her delicate contorting
. Men craned forward in their seats
,
and women seemed
unsure
whether to hate the tiny spectacle
or be envious
.

The
chasing
clowns
returned
with their frantic
pursuit
,
as
tiny
Amira
bowed and
exited
. Rising from the middle of one bleacher was a man in a police costume, oversized gold star pinned to his chest, who
drew a sword from the sheath on his hip and bounded down to restrain the clowns
.
Cowering under the glare of the
shining
blade,
the smiling clown returned
t
he
red
nose to its rightful
owner
and the
hero cop
celebrated the
justice he’d
delivered
by
tilting up his chin and
swallowing the long narrow sword
.
After w
ithdr
a
w
ing
it slowly
, he
bow
ed
to the cheering crowd
and
skipp
ed
out of the spotlight
.

The lion was tamed and the tight wire was tumbled across, then all
the performers returned for two laps around the center ring, including most of the Freaks of Nature
who
’d
co
me to join the procession from their own tents. Graceful Gracie was usually the last to exit the encore,
scouring
the dirt floor for any remaining peanuts.

*
*
*

The summer rolled on
.
When Gracie wasn’t performing, she was usually off doing surprisingly cub-like things. The old bear chased the noisy gulls and sometimes snuck up on workers napping in shady spots, pouncing and play-growling, gumming their soft spots in pretend death-grips.

When Gracie tired of digging up agonizingly delicious smells buried deep in the muck and had suffered enough pinches from the tasty crabs scooped out of the canal, her attention turned to the snoring prey huddled among partially repaired machines.

And there was nothing quite like the surprise attack of a snarling black bear, even one missing all forty-two teeth, to urge
a person
back to work. Waking up with several hundred mud-encrusted, reeking pounds on top of you
—
your neck suffering a hickey of epic proportions
—
pushed the limits on what was tolerable.

“Slim, get yer friggin’ mutt bear offa me!
”

Graci
e knew this was human speak for
“I give up!
”
She’d let go of whatever soft spot she’d latched onto and give the ex-prey an affectionate kiss from chin to forehead, lest there be any hard feelings. And, heck, they were probably going to play
the same
game
again tomorrow.

Gracie watched the
cars rumble over the Fish Head Island
bridge
every afternoon but knew to keep her distance
.
Her good man had warned her tha
t the people in those cars were not
to be played with unless she was on a leash or it was during a show.
Soon
after the cars began arriving, the music from the
k
iddy rides
was switched on and Gracie couldn’t help but dance wherever she
had been exploring
.
The
tent flaps for the
noisy games and the
Freaks of Nature were tied up shortly after
. Gracie danced in
two
main
event shows
on some days and two extras on nights when the lots were overflowing with cars
.
She
could sense how much people loved her circus
, the happy screams and all the wonderful laughter.

And it was nice to stroll along the bay in the evening without all the usual biting insects, for sure.

Gracie and the other animals were in better spirits than they’d been in years. Instead of being packed up in their cages every week or so and jostled across steaming highways with choking exhaust and no chance to stretch their legs,
they enjoyed
the
softness of the
marsh grass
and all the
room to roam
—more
than any place they’d ever known.
S
leep was easy and deep,
because
the
ir rest wasn’t disturbed by
car horns and piercing sirens. It was a quiet place, with salty smells from the edge of the earth.

Here on Fish Head, the lion still hacked, but not quite as much. The temperamental zonkey hadn’t bucked off a trained dog
—
or even the clown who sometimes worked her into his act
—
in weeks. Even Beelzebub, the ill-tempered guard dog, seeme
d to have found an inner peace,
for
days went by when he didn’t try to bite a single person.

*
*
*

Billy Wayne Hooduk, of course, took full credit, as instructed by his book.

Step number
forty-seven
from
How
t
o
B
ecome
a
Cult Leader
i
n 50 Easy Steps
:
“When things go wrong, be fast and unwavering in assigning blame. When things go right, be equally prompt in accepting
praise
and basking in the glory and good will you deserve.
”

Billy Wayne was also going to rely on the advice of step number forty-eight: “Give people the impression they have a clear choice, making certain the decision you want them to select is unquestionably the only reasonable option.
”

Over small cups of vanilla pudding, Billy Wayne looked out at the bleachers and counted fifty-three people, which was a few more than when they’d landed on the island. Splashing around down at the edge of the bay were another eight or nine filthy kids, plus there was Flat Man
,
who
needed
his pudding delivered. Billy Wayne knew he’d have to be careful with his remarks this afternoon, since money could do funny things to people, especially those who weren’t used
to having much of it. He
certainly wasn’t used to being around the stacks of cash
being
emptied from the various tills.

Billy Wayne had assumed the role of therapist, mentor, decision maker, and accountant since leading the troupe to
Fish Head Island, despite never performing any of these jobs in his life
. But even with a complete lack of understanding when it came to balancing a checkbook, Billy Wayne recognized
that
the Pisani brothers had been cooking the books by simply erasing a couple of zeros here and there, calli
ng each season a marginal loss.

Not showing a profit and therefore
not being able
to raise wages was surely the motive of the two old brothers. Billy Wayne assumed it was a circus trick as old as tight rope walking and human cannonballing.

The eight major performers were paid two hundred dollars a week each, plus two percent of the Big Top ticket sales. The ten Freaks of Nature each made a hundred
fifty, while the three dozen other workers
made
a hundred
a piece
. Adding in food for the people and animals, as well as other minor expenses, the cost of running the circus was about eight thousand dollars a week. Counting Big Top ticket sales, ride tickets, concessions, game booths, and Freaks of Nature tickets, the Pisani Brothers Circus was clearing more than thirteen thousand dollars a week.