The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (31 page)

I told him he was a good baby a hundred times a day. I dropped
him enough hunks of beef to feed an adult lion, his nervous energy
burning it off as fast as he could lap it up. When he was on his hind legs,
pawing the air, I'd tickle his pleasure spot with the broom end, a niceness that confused him and made him spit. Then one day it happened.
You're a good cat crossed his mind. You could see it pass over him. Just
sat there, he did, head cocked, mulling the whole prospect over. Was as
though I'd convinced him tenderloin wasn't good eating.

After that, Nigger was still miles from being docile, but he did
start considering the possibility of being agreeable on the occasions
when there was something in it for him. I got him to sit up, something
he'd been doing all along, only now he was doing it for meat and not
because he wanted to wave his claws in my face. Then I started sending
him through hoops, his size and agility allowing him to jump twice as
far as a tiger. Plus I got him to do tricks with the Bengals in the steel
arena, something that wasn't supposed to be possible with a jaguar, no
how, no way.

Late one afternoon, about two weeks before the season opener, I
was sending the last of the Bengals through the cage tunnel when I
smelled cigar. I looked over and realized John Ringling had been
watching the whole thing. Though it was winter and the cat barn was
chilly, there was no cause to be wearing a full-length Italian virgin wool
coat and kid gloves besides. He looked at me for a few seconds, sucking
on his cigar. Then he pulled it from his mouth and walked away, looking not at all displeased.

So.

April 22, 1921, Madison Square Garden, Ringling Brothers
Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Greatest Show on Earth. We opened with a spec the Ringlings had been putting on for years called "The Durbur
of Delhi." As the name suggested, it was East Indian in flavour, and
included four dozen elephants, each mounted with a howdah and a
waving red-dotted girl inside, two dozen stallion-drawn Roman chariots and a float done up to look like the golden dragon Chu Chin Chow.

Then came the aerialists, a picture act pure and simple, intended
to please the senses rather than thrill. The bandmaster, Merle Evans,
would spur the orchestra into something lush and romantic. Then thirty-six girls, each one dressed like an Andalusian, with red skirts and
black net stockings and a rose between her teeth, would invert themselves and hang from a rope crooked through the knee. Then they'd
rotate slowly and in syncopation, bathed in red and green and gold,
their arms extended and their smiles fluorescent. Was a thing of beauty, seeing all those young women rotate in tandem, particularly if you
consider slow precision a form of beauty. Plus a lot of chest area was
caught by swirling light, giving the dads in the audience something to
remember now that the citizen groups had pretty much railroaded
cooch into carnivals and burlesque halls and the lowlier wagon shows.
After a few minutes, the music would wind down and the girls would
get lowered to the big top floor and Fred Bradna-top hat and monocle in place -would announce, "Ladies and gentlemen, all eyes on the
centre ring steel arena ..."

In other words, me. The Ringlings believed the cat trainer should
go on soon as possible so they could get the steel arena out of the way
early. With an orchestra blare I came in wearing my white leathers,
waving and smiling and cracking my whip for effect. Then came the
tigers: eight of them, beautiful Bengals all, beef fed and straw bedded
and mighty pawed, their coats gleaming from egg baths and visits with
a real veterinarian. Then it was Nigger's turn, lurching down the tunnel, looking left and right.

The audience hushed, for Nigger started pacing the arena like a
caged animal, which I suppose was fair though it upset me anyway. I followed him at a respectful distance while shouting, "Seat, Nigger!
Seat!" When this didn't work I kept trying to cut him off to get him to
his pedestal, which is impossible to do in a circular arena, Nigger doubling back and crossing behind the line of Bengals. I finally got him on
the pedestal around the seven-minute mark, the time at which the display would normally be over.

Truth is, I was starting to get nervous, for the Ringlings were
sticklers for punctuality, believing flow was what made a circus and not
the contribution of any single act or performer (the one possible exception being the elephants). So I flowed. Or leastways I tried to. Sent the
Bengals through their sit-ups and rollovers and hoop jumps as fast as
was possible, forgetting Nigger completely until it came time for the
finale. This was the only trick I couldn't excuse him from, for he was
the top, and without him I would've just had a bunch of tigers sitting in
an odd-looking clump instead of the world's first tiger-topped-withjaguar pyramid.

He wouldn't do it. Just plain refused. As the Bengals took their
positions, he kept taking little runs at me from his seat, which I'd fend
off by sticking my broomstick into his mouth. Or I'd pull out my gun
and fire blanks in his face, cats not being fond of loud noises or the
smell of gunpowder. He'd slink back to his pedestal and snarl and glare
and generally do everything in his power to look menacing. It was
around then the world went silent.

It didn't particularly bother me, my damn hearing picking that
moment to up and go, for blocking out all the noise and clamour did
help me focus on the problem at hand, something I sorely needed with
a pissed-off jaguar lunging at me every few seconds. It was like we
were alone together, everything quiet and thick as though underwater.
Meanwhile, I had to keep an eye out for the Bengals, for even the best
tiger on earth will turn ferocious if it detects a weakness in its trainer.
In other words, I had a lot on my plate. By the ten-minute mark I was
soaking wet. Around the twenty-minute mark, John Ringling himself left his box and came arena-side and started yelling, "Give it up,
Mabel!" Truth was, I couldn't hear the man, didn't even know he was
there, though later I was told he went pink in the face and the skin
padding his chin started to wobble. Even if I had heard him I probably
wouldn't've obeyed for if a cat wins a battle even once you can never
work that animal again. At the thirty-minute mark I decided I was good
and angry, and to hell with who was watching and any sensibilities
might be involved. So I walked up to that snarling almond-eyed devil
and I stared him straight in the eye and I unnerved him by smiling.

Was a move dangerous and foolhardy and one resorted to only in
the spirit of absolute frustration, for I was offering up my body as a target: had he leaped, there would've been nothing but nothing I could've
done. This was the point, for I'd found in the past if you show an animal you trust them completely it can have a calming effect. Course, I'd
forged this theory with Rajah and trained Bengals and not on a bitter
black jaguar who still yearned for palm trees and warm ocean trade
winds. I tried it anyway. Instead of springing, he looked at me perplexed, as if to say, Now what could she be up to? Then he relaxed. You
could practically see the tension flow out of his shoulders and jaw. Next
thing I knew he was jumping off his pedestal and not just moving to the
top of the pyramid but moving there sharply. The applause came in the
form of a roar, which I heard because my hearing had come back,
though to my left ear only, meaning for a second I thought one half of
the tent had liked the trick and the other half for some reason hadn't.
Sightlines, I figured.

As I exited through the blue curtain, the performers from the next
display all patted me on the back and said, "Way to show 'em, Mabel!
Way to hang tough!" Was a case of them being nice, I figured, so I
headed straight to my car and collapsed beside Rajah and spent a long,
miserable night holding my tiger. Here I'd been paid to provide flow
and spectacle, and instead I'd taken thirty minutes to get an animal no
bigger than a large dog to move from one seat to another. Mighty impressive. As I didn't sleep well, I slept late, wakening to the sound of
knocking on my car door.

I answered with a robe wrapped around me. A Ringling porter
told me he had a delivery from Mr. John Ringling, and when I moved
out of the road a second porter who'd been standing to the side carried
in the largest bouquet of red roses I'd ever seen in my life, each one
long stemmed and prickly as yours truly. I could barely even see the
second porter for the foliage, the bouquet looking as though it'd sprung
a pair of legs and was using them to walk in on. I spent the next ten
minutes counting them, giving up around the hundred mark, though I
suspected I was looking at a gross of flowers, poking out in every angle
conceivable from a brass vase the size of a saloon tub. It took up most
of the back half of my stateroom.

"Look, Rajah," I squealed, and he jumped off the bed and came
over and bit at one of the flowers, whimpering and jumping back when
a thorn caught his lip. Seeing this, I laughed and suggested we get some
air, though I was thinking more that I had to get outside and prove to
myself this was really happening. I got dressed and leashed up Rajah
and went to the corner newspaper box and there it was: a front-page
article in the New York World saying how a girl weighing one hundred
pounds wet had provided the greatest thrills during the opening show
of the Ringling Brothers Circus, 1921 season. Note: it hadn't been
Cadona or Con Colleano or Emil Pallenberg or May Wirth or Bird
Millman or Luciano Christiani or Poodles Hannaford or that prima
donna Lillian Leitzel. It'd been me.

Later that week, Liberty magazine caught up with the show and
did an article on Mabel Stark. This got followed up by bits in Collier's
and Saturday Evening Post and Harper's and local papers by the score.
I did radio interviews too, dulling down my hick accent as much as was
possible. In every one I promised I'd be working a wrestler by mid-season, which of course they believed as they'd all heard about Rajah from
my Barnes days. One day, about a week after we left New York City, the train got adjusted and I found my suite had been moved, so I was up
near the wire walker Bird Millman and the trick rider May Wirth,
though way back from the entire cars occupied by John and Charles
Ringling. Hacks started coming around, wanting to write my life story,
promising best-sellers and maybe even a movie. Was fame, this, all
because I'd sweet-talked a fierce-tempered jaguar into taking a
pedestal. Once I got Rajah wrestling again I figured I'd get even more
of it, a possibility that made me so excited I had to force myself to
breathe deep every time I thought about it.

Now, the funny thing about fame is you start believing you're the
cause of it and not the press agents. You read the articles and you
believe every word, especially if it drowns out suspicions you've been
trying to drown out as long as you care to remember. Believe me. The
flip side of having your insides moulded by sadness is that with a minimum of encouragement you start considering yourself the second
coming, someone they're probably going to invent an antidote to old
age for. Here's an example of how skewed and wonky this celebrity
business makes your thinking, particularly if it sneaks up and bushwhacks you the way it bushwhacked me: not once did it occur to me
that having my face plastered in every newspaper in the country might
not be such a good idea, seeing as I was a woman with a past and still
considered a fugitive in certain parts of that country.

From New York City we started acting like a circus, packing up after
every evening show and travelling through the night, cherry-picking
our way through Pennsylvania and Maryland and the Virginias. We
stayed in towns with fine lots and populations sufficient to pack a big
top that held twelve thousand people, more with straw bundles down.
We headed southwest, sleeping on good mattresses and eating good
food off tables set with linen, china and fresh-cut flowers. (Course, in
the workingmen's cookhouse things weren't quite so civilized.) By
March we slipped into Kentucky, doing one show in Lexington before moving on to Louisville, and if that bony-arsed old aunt of mine was in
the audience she sure wasn't carrying a sign to let me know about it.
From there we jumped to Bowling Green, which is in the middle of the
state though slightly off to the west side and near the Tennessee border.
We played two straw houses there, people needing something to spend
their money on now that liquor wasn't an option (or leastways a legal
one). The draft, war, prohibition-back then it seemed like everything,
bad or good or somewhere in between, worked out well for the circus.

After my evening performance I was feeling a little tired and a little worried about Rajah, who was still foraging through my underwear
drawer when I wasn't with him, ripping and tearing and shredding
whatever he got his paws on. I'd tried washing them in bleach, thinking
maybe his nose picked up a scent not removed by normal laundering.
When this hadn't worked I'd finally resorted to bagging them and
slinging them between two hooks I'd screwed into the ceiling of the
car. Often I'd come home and find Rajah on his hind legs, taking swipes
while breathing hard.

With the idea of saving my undies I decided to leave shortly after
the intermission, before Bird Millman's wire walk and May Wirth's
backward somersault from one moving horse to the next and Lillian
Leitzel's left-handed planges and Alfred Cadona's triple somersault.
Because I left early, the midget brigade wasn't ready to escort single
ladies back to the train so I set out alone. It was a short walk, through
a neighbourhood of rickety low-standing wood buildings lit by naked
light bulbs, in a part of town deserted and therefore quiet, which I suppose had a lot to do with it being circus night.

I could hear my heels clacking against the pavement, steam escaping from pavement grates and tabby cats mewing. After walking a couple of blocks, I reached the point where I could continue on the main
street, taking a left after a couple of blocks and then doubling back so
as to reach the rail yard using the major streets. This would take another twenty minutes. My other option was to sneak through an alleyway running into a long, thin, dark space separating a box factory and a tenement. This route would take two minutes and we'd been warned by
the lot manager not to use it. Everybody did anyway.