Water for Elephants (44 page)

But it all zipped by. One minute Marlena and I were in it up to our eyeballs, and next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college. And now, here I am. In my nineties and alone.

Charlie, bless his heart, is actually interested in my story. He picks
up the bottle and leans forward. As I push my glass toward him, there’s a knock on the door. I yank my hand back as though it’s been singed.

Charlie slides off the bench and leans toward a window, pulling the plaid curtain back with two fingers.

“Shit,” he says. “It’s the heat. I wonder what’s up?”

“They’re here for me.”

He glances at me, hard and precise. “What?”

“They’re here for me,” I say, trying to keep my eyes level with his. It’s hard—I have nystagmus, the result of a long-ago concussion. The harder I try to look steadily at someone, the more my eyes jerk back and forth.

Charlie lets the curtain fall and goes to the door.

“Good evening,” says a deep voice from the doorway. “I’m looking for a Charlie O’Brien. Someone said I could find him here.”

“You can and did. What can I do for you, officer?”

“I was hoping you could help us out. An elderly man went missing from a nursing home just down the street. The staff seems to think he probably came here.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. Folks of all ages enjoy the circus.”

“Sure. Of course. Thing is, this guy is ninety-three and pretty frail. They were hoping he’d come back on his own after the show, but it’s been a couple of hours and he still hasn’t showed up. They’re mighty worried about him.”

Charlie blinks pleasantly at the cop. “Even if he did come here, I doubt he’s still around. We’re fixing to leave real soon.”

“Do you remember seeing anyone fitting that description tonight?”

“Sure. Lots. All sorts of families brought their old folks.”

“How about an old man on his own?”

“I didn’t notice, but then again we get so many people coming through I kind of tune out after a while.”

The cop pokes his head inside the trailer. His eyes light on me with obvious interest. “Who’s that?”

“Who—him?” says Charlie, waving in my direction.

“Yes.”

“That’s my dad.”

“Do you mind if I come in for a moment?”

After just the slightest pause, Charlie steps aside. “Sure, be my guest.”

The cop climbs inside the trailer. He’s so tall he has to stoop. He has a jutting chin and fiercely hooked nose. His eyes are set too close together, like an orangutan’s. “How are you doing, sir?” he asks, coming closer. He squints, examining me closely.

Charlie shoots me a look. “Dad can’t talk. He had a major stroke a few years ago.”

“Wouldn’t he better off staying at home?” says the officer.

“This is home.”

I drop my jaw and let it quaver. I reach for my glass with a trembling hand and nearly knock it over. Nearly, because it would be a shame to waste such good scotch.

“Here, Pops, let me help you,” says Charlie, rushing over. He slides onto the bench beside me and reaches for my glass. He lifts it to my lips.

I point my tongue like a parrot’s, letting it touch the ice cubes that tumble toward my mouth.

The cop watches. I’m not looking directly at him, but I can see him in my peripheral vision.

Charlie sets my glass down and gazes placidly at him.

The cop watches us for a while, then scans the room with narrowed eyes. Charlie’s face is blank as a wall, and I do my best to drool.

Finally the cop tips his cap. “Thank you, gentlemen. If you see or hear anything, please let us know right away. This old guy is in no shape to be out on his own.”

“I surely will,” says Charlie. “Feel free to have a look around the lot. I’ll have my guys keep an eye out for him. It would be a terrible shame if something happened to him.”

“Here’s my number,” says the cop, handing Charlie a card. “Give me a call if you hear anything.”

“You bet.”

The cop takes one final look around and then steps toward the door. “Well, good night then,” he says.

“Good night,” says Charlie, following him to the door. After he shuts
it, he comes back to the table. He sits and pours us each another whiskey. We each take a sip and then sit in silence.

“Are you sure about this?” he finally asks.

“Yup.”

“What about your health? You need any medicine?”

“Nope. There’s nothing wrong with me but old age. And I reckon that will take care of itself eventually.”

“What about your family?”

I take another sip of whiskey, swirl the remaining liquid around the bottom, and then drain the glass. “I’ll send them postcards.”

I look at his face and realize that didn’t come out right.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I love them and I know they love me, but I’m no longer really a part of their lives. I’m more like a duty. That’s why I had to find my own way over here tonight. They plum forgot about me.”

Charlie’s brow is furrowed. He looks dubious.

I barrel on, desperate. “I’m ninety-three. What have I got to lose? I can still mostly take care of myself. I’ll need some help for some things, but nothing like what you’re thinking.” I feel my eyes grow moist and try to rearrange my ruined face into some semblance of toughness. I’m no wimp, by God. “Let me come along. I can sell tickets. Russ can do anything—he’s young. Give me his job. I can still count, and I don’t short-change. I know you don’t run a grift show.”

Charlie’s eyes mist over. I swear to God they do.

I continue, on a roll. “If they catch up with me, they catch up with me. If they don’t, well, then at end of season I’ll call and go back. And if something goes wrong in the meantime, just call and they’ll come get me. What’s the harm in that?”

Charlie stares at me. I’ve never seen a man look more serious.

One, two, three, four, five, six
—he’s not going to answer—
seven, eight, nine
—he’s going to send me back there, and why shouldn’t he, he doesn’t know me from Adam—
ten, eleven, twelve—

“All right,” he says.

“All right?”

“All right. Let’s give you something to tell your grandkids about. Or great-grandkids. Or great-great-grandkids.”

I snort with glee, delirious with excitement. Charlie winks and pours me another finger’s worth of whiskey. Then, on second thought, he tips the bottle again.

I reach out and grab its neck. “Better not,” I say. “Don’t want to get tipsy and break a hip.”

And then I laugh, because it’s so ridiculous and so gorgeous and it’s all I can do to not melt into a fit of giggles. So what if I’m ninety-three? So what if I’m ancient and cranky and my body’s a wreck? If they’re willing to accept me and my guilty conscience, why the hell shouldn’t I run away with the circus?

It’s like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this
is
home.

Author’s Note

The idea for this book came unexpectedly: In early 2003 I was gearing up to write an entirely different book when the
Chicago Tribune
ran an article on Edward J. Kelty, a photographer who followed traveling circuses around America in the 1920s and ’30s. The photograph that accompanied the article so fascinated me that I bought two books of old-time circus photographs:
Step Right This Way: The Photographs of Edward J. Kelty
and
Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus as Seen by F. W. Glasier
. By the time I’d thumbed through them, I was hooked. I abandoned the book I’d planned to write and dove instead into the world of the train circus.

I started by getting a bibliography of suggested reading from the archivist at Circus World, in Baraboo, Wisconsin, which is the original winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers. Many of the books were out of print, but I managed to get them through rare booksellers. Within weeks I was off to Sarasota, Florida, to visit the Ringling Circus Museum, which happened to be selling off duplicates of books in its rare book collection. I came home poorer by several hundred dollars and richer by more books than I could carry.

I spent the next four and a half months acquiring the knowledge necessary to do justice to this subject, including taking three additional research trips (a return to Sarasota, a visit to Circus World in Baraboo, and a weekend trip to the Kansas City Zoo with one of its former elephant handlers to learn about elephant body language and behavior).

The history of the American circus is so rich that I plucked many of
this story’s most outrageous details from fact or anecdote (in circus history, the line between the two is famously blurred). These include the display of a hippo pickled in formaldehyde, a deceased four-hundred-pound “strong lady” being paraded around town in an elephant cage, an elephant who repeatedly pulled her stake and stole the lemonade, another elephant who ran off and was retrieved from a backyard vegetable patch, a lion and a dishwasher wedged together under a sink, a general manager who was murdered and his body rolled up in the big top, and so on. I also incorporated the horrific and very real tragedy of Jamaica ginger paralysis, which devastated the lives of approximately one hundred thousand Americans between 1930 and 1931.

And finally, I’d like to draw attention to two old-time circus elephants, not just because they inspired major plot points, but also because these old girls deserve to be remembered.

In 1903 an elephant named Topsy killed her trainer after he fed her a lit cigarette. Most circus elephants at the time were forgiven a killing or two—as long as they didn’t kill a rube—but this was Topsy’s third strike. Topsy’s owners at Coney Island’s Luna Park decided to turn her execution into a public spectacle, but the announcement that they were going to hang her met with uproar—after all, wasn’t hanging a cruel and unusual punishment? Ever resourceful, Topsy’s owners contacted Thomas Edison. For years, Edison had been “proving” the dangers of rival George Westinghouse’s alternating current by publicly electrocuting stray dogs and cats, along with the occasional horse or cow—but nothing as ambitious as an elephant. He accepted the challenge. Because the electric chair had replaced the gallows as New York’s official method of execution, the protests stopped.

Accounts differ as to whether Topsy was fed cyanide-laced carrots in an early, failed, execution attempt or whether she ate them immediately before she was electrocuted, but what is not disputed is that Edison brought a movie camera, had Topsy strapped into copper-lined sandals, and shot sixty-six hundred volts through her in front of fifteen hundred spectators, killing her in about ten seconds. Edison, convinced that this
feat discredited alternating current, went on to show the film to audiences across the country.

On to a less sobering note. Also in 1903, an outfit in Dallas acquired an elephant named Old Mom from Carl Hagenbeck, a circus legend who declared her to be the smartest elephant he’d ever had. Their hopes thus raised, Old Mom’s new trainers were dismayed to find they could persuade her to do nothing more than shuffle around. Indeed, she was so useless she “had to be pushed and pulled from one circus lot to another.” When Hagenbeck later visited Old Mom at her new home, he was aggrieved to hear her described as stupid and said so—in German. It suddenly dawned on everyone that Old Mom only understood German. After this watershed, Old Mom was retrained in English and went on to an illustrious career. She died in 1933 at the ripe old age of eighty, surrounded by her friends and fellow troupers.

Here’s to Topsy and Old Mom—

W
ATER FOR
E
LEPHANTS

A Conversation with the Author 339

Book-Group Discussion Questions 347

A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR