Effigy (31 page)
Bendy jammed his hands into his pockets.
“Bendy.” Camden Pitch came out of himself. “That your act?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Contortionist.”
“Sir?”
The clown gave a high laugh, setting both lines of birds squawking. “That’s a word you’ll want to know. Hush now, lovelies, hush.” He pursed his lips and blew a stream of breath along each arm—ruffling feathers, quieting nerves. “You can work over there till he comes.” He gestured with his chin to the crowded far corner. “Keep clear of the ring for now.”
“Sure.” Bendy followed the undulating wall, turned a sharp right angle and carried on to the hill of bales. Setting his pack down on the ground, he began limbering up.
Balance was key. It was one thing to tuck a foot behind your head while seated. Onlookers, put in mind of their own hips and hamstrings, might respond with wondering groans. Do it while standing on one leg, however, and they’d think not of their own bodies, but of trees made flesh and bone.
It wasn’t easy to support the whole of his weight on one foot while he flung the other one up and back. He toppled backwards, hit hard-packed, sandy soil, untangled himself, rose and toppled again—half a dozen tries before he was blessed with an idea. Drawing the stubby knife from his boot, he sawed open a pair of bales and scattered himself a bed upon which to land. Knowing it was there behind him helped. On the next attempt he held steady for a full ten seconds before swaying and buckling back.
He sat up to find her watching him. Her cage door gaped, the purple drapery pushed aside. Dropping her left haunch to the cage floor, she slid her knees out from beneath her and dangled her feet out the open door. She pointed her toes as though stretching to dip them in a stream. This time she was clothed. Barely. A nightdress of sorts, but shorter, petal pink. Exposing the long pelts of her legs.
“Bendy, is it?” A low voice, softly mocking.
He nodded. For a second he considered adding
John James
, but the syllables seemed all wrong. A single turn of the clock and already his given name had the feel of a lie. He glanced over his shoulder to find Camden paying them no mind. The clown was balanced on a pair of short stilts, a monkey perched like a trapper’s hat on his head.
“I’m Philomena. Pitch lopped off the
Philo
the day he took me on. Too much of a mouthful.”
It was strangely thrilling to hear human speech issue forth from all that fur. Bendy realized he was staring. “You didn’t mind?”
She smiled. “Small enough price to pay.”
“For what?”
“What do you mean, for what? You just joined. You ought to have some idea.”
He nodded again, though the force that had carried him to where he sat now was nothing so well formed as an idea. They watched one another for a long moment before she spoke again.
“Before he took me on, I was in a room. One room. Door bolted on the outside, one window, no curtains. You can part a curtain and peek out, and while you’re doing that somebody might just chance to peek in. I had shutters. Shutters my daddy nailed shut.”
Bendy swallowed. “All alone?”
“Not always. My mother brought me food, books. Sometimes we played cards.” She paused. “Pitch got wind of a hairy girl and worked a deal with the old man. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. I was thirteen when he sprung me. Been with the show three years.” After a moment’s silence she brought her hands together in a clap. “Try that trick again. Twelfth time’s the charm.”
Her regard made him worthy. His supporting leg became a pylon. An unseen plumb bob dropped from the tail of his spine. The bent leg swung up sweetly, heel cresting skull, hooking and catching hold. A single, tapering tremor and he had it. She smiled. He was rock solid. He could hop on the spot if he so desired. Maybe he’d try that next—he might even make her laugh.
Just then the narrow strip of tent that lay between them—between straw mountain and cage—parted. A hand came first, followed by the same bare, knotted arm Bendy had seen stirring the monkeys in their cage. Then a face. Again the Pitch features, but youthful and somehow flattened. The cageboy looked from
Philomena to Bendy, his gaze grappling along the sightline they shared.
Bendy’s balance left him. The topknot of torso, head and leg sprang open upon impact. His wind was gone. The back wall of the tent healed over as Pitch the younger stepped all the way inside.
Bendy gulped and got nothing. Gulped again, caught purchase and hauled in a breath. One more, and he could manage a shaky sit. Raising his eyes to Philomena, he took in her terrible stillness, the hands gripped tightly in her lap.
The cageboy approached, each step a narrow lunge. He stood over Bendy, thrusting his groin out as though it were a chin or a kneecap, rather than a clutch of tender organs worn on the outside. He was making the most of the moment, his temporary advantage in height. Bendy contemplated rising, maybe even shooting up fast, but a twitch of dull wisdom made him wait.
“Stanley Pitch.” The cageboy surprised him, reaching down a hand. Until Bendy realized that to take it would be to take a hand up.
“Dan Pitch’s son,” Stanley added, and Bendy saw then he had no choice. The cageboy’s palm was rutted, his fingers blunt. In the sharp up-haul to standing, Bendy got a taste of his rival’s strength.
It was full afternoon by the time Pitch finally showed. Stanley had long since disappeared through the tent’s back flap with Philomena. Bendy had stretched himself sore and was lying on the scattered straw. Camden had his birds back in their cages and was arranging his props in a coffin-sized crate when the ringmaster shoved the front flap aside.
“Ah, you’ve come.” He strode forward, high-stepping over the circle of mounded-up dirt that defined the ring.
“Yes, sir.” Bendy rolled up onto the balls of his feet and walked to meet him.
“European tent.” Pitch swept his arm in a loose circle, a gesture that encompassed the single ring, the four corner poles.
“Two-bit, he means,” Camden added, grinning clear back to his puffy gums.
“My brother jests.”
Looking around, Bendy found a single ring to be more than enough. As a child, he’d gotten used to gathering a crowd about him like a blanket, close enough so every comment stood clear—here the brash twang of a Sydney Duck, here the red tongue of a Chileno, laid haltingly over English or let slide down the grooves of its own design. Smells, too. No man could be a miner who hadn’t made his peace with dirt, but dirt was the least of it, the cleanest. Their bodies were left to run on scraps and camp coffee for months of sweating blood, then dragged to town and gorged on whiskey, fried potatoes and fatty steak. Some managed to distinguish themselves, one man reeking of peppermint, another of hair oil, another of some putrefaction trapped deep inside. There would be no such discerning under the high white tent. His audience would be miles away.
Pitch flung his arms out wide. “A lot of space for a skin-and-bones lad to fill. Think you’re up to it?” He rolled on before Bendy could answer. “You take me, for instance. You could lose sight of Dan Pitch if he turned sideways, but out here I’m a giant. Ever seen a cat backed into a corner? Puffs itself up double. Doesn’t matter how you get there, terror, pride—point is, a man’s as big as he believes.”
This last elicited a grunt from Camden, laden with wire cages, crabbing sideways out the backstage flap.
Pitch stepped in close. “It gets to where you feel you could touch them, each and every one. Reach out a fingertip—” He grinned. “—or in your case a toe-tip, and lay it on whomever you please.”
The ringmaster put him through his paces that day. They were a good hour into their rehearsal by the time the cageboy returned alone. Neither father nor son made a pretence of greeting the other. Pitch said only, “Bales, Stanley.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
The ringmaster waited a beat. “No idea.”
Bent over between two straw bales, his fingers worming under twine, the son stiffened. “Bales. I’m doing bales.”
Another beat, this one a hair longer. “I can see that, Stanley. It’s quite plain.”
Stanley straightened, his face working, wine-dark. Bendy averted his eyes. There was a moment’s standoff, during which the monkeys struck up a muffled chorus beyond the sailcloth wall. Pitch ended things abruptly with a neat half turn on one heel. Over his shoulder he said lightly, “Well, get on with it.”
While Pitch talked Bendy through pose after pose, Stanley worked at dismantling the golden pile. It took several slant-eyed glances for Bendy to determine the cageboy’s purpose. Why cart heavy benches from venue to venue when even the most primitive mining town was sure to have a supply of straw? Stanley was laying the bales out in concentric circles beyond the dirt ring—staggered with sightlines and minimal legroom in mind. Once he got his head down, he proceeded like a Clydesdale, shoulders straining, eyes fixed and dull.
Bendy unwound himself from a particularly trying position in time to watch the cageboy drop the last pair into place. The mountain
had shrunk considerably, to perhaps a dozen bales squared. It stood between Bendy and the tent’s back flap. Watching Stanley duck out of sight behind it, he saw that it was meant to act as a sort of blind—performers appearing from behind a bright edifice rather than squeezing in through a fluttering slit.
Letting his gaze wander, he found the tent transformed. Light shimmered off the yellow seats, warming the ghostly walls. He felt a rush of promise in his watery limbs.
“Can you ride?” Pitch asked out of nowhere. “I could use a second in my act.”
The question tipped Bendy back a little on his heels.
“Stanley used to manage it, before he got so thick through the chest.” Pitch narrowed his eyes. “His mother’s people, thick-chested, every one. Well?”
Bendy steadied himself. “I can ride.”
May 21st, 1867
Dear Daughter
It is late and after much trouble I have managed to light the candle and dip my pen. I was roused by one of Mr. Burr’s cries. You will not have forgotten his habit of screaming himself awake from time to time. I will not sleep now with my heart stuttering and him fussing on the far side of the wall. He was not always such a man. The Lyman Burr I married had many parts but life will draw out some and beat down others. I was left with his weaknesses. For a time they made me strong.
Heaven only knows what brought it on this time. Maybe the hog he butchered this morning with Kitty’s help. I watched her out my window clip-clomping across the yard to fetch him bucket after bucket from the well. She will be tending to him now comforting him any way she can.
Dorrie I have told you there are many beginnings. Here is another. Years ago your father did a terrible thing. Ten years to be exact. He did not act alone. Some fifty Saints from
hereabouts took part and untold numbers of savages besides. But I run ahead of myself.
In the late summer of 1857 a Gentile wagon train bound for California struck a path through Zion taking the southern trail. The bulk of them hailed from Arkansas where our beloved Apostle Parley Pratt had so lately been cut down in cold blood and McClean his murderer allowed to roam free. What was more they had among their number several rough men of Missouri that state so infamous in the history of our Church. There were stories. At Corn Creek they had poisoned a spring or some dead cattle or both. Several Pahvant Indians and a young Saint had died. They had torn down fences and turned their stock onto our pastures. They had popped the heads off chickens with their whips. The Missouri men had harassed women and uttered threats from town to town. Some had bragged of taking part in the murders at Haun’s Mill. One had even gone so far as to claim he held the gun that shot Brother Joseph at the Carthage jail.
The Saints refused them trade. It was forbidden to provision the train in any way. By the time they had passed through Cedar and were pulling south to Pinto feelings were running high. Do not forget Dorrie at this time Deseret was under threat of invasion by the Americans. Our militia drilled daily. We expected at any moment the arrival of troops from both east and west.
The Gentile train carried on southwest along the California Trail and made camp at Mountain Meadows where lay the last good grass and water before the Mojave’s barren waste. They would rest there or so they thought. They never left. They were dispatched as are so many in this wild land by redskins. But also by Saints. Fifty or thereabouts as I have written the leaders
among them men of high rank. I shall not take the chance of recording their names here but I believe in time they will be widely known. Truth will cut its own way. The Prophet’s words Dorrie. I have finally taken them to heart.
Mr. Burr did as he was ordered. As you know Dorrie we Saints are counselled to obey the word of our superiors in the Church. Those who ordered the killing had been placed in power by Brother Brigham and therefore by God. And yet my husband is haunted as no doubt are his fellow murderers. As am I. It is crime enough to have kept the secret but I have done more. I have absolved him. Night after night I quieted his conscience even as I muzzled my own. The Lord only knows how Kitty manages it. I suspect she must smother his guilt with her young flesh. Doubtless she believes him plagued by monsters that live nowhere but in his own slumbering mind. I know better and so my methods were more elaborate by far.
When he would wake from the dream that his mouth was overflowing with blood I would tip a cup of clear water to his lips. And when he had drunk his fill I would sing to him. Not lullabies as you might think but battle hymns.
In thy Mountain retreat God will strengthen thy feet
On the necks of thy foes thou shalt tread
.
Or sometimes
Remember the wrongs of Missouri
Forget not the fate of Nauvoo
.
When the God-hating foe is before you
Stand firm and be faithful and true
.
Often he would fix on one aspect of the thing and make a litany of it. Such as how they made camp on the meadow after the killing and how all night long he could hear a spring close by gurgling like a severed throat. On such nights I would read to him. How I scoured all Scripture for the passages that would suit. Many of them I read out so often as to have them by heart. From Elder John Taylor’s statement recounting the slaying of the Prophet and his brother Hyrum I took this
And their innocent blood with all the innocent
blood of all the martyrs under the altar that
John saw will cry unto the Lord of Hosts till he
avenges that blood on the earth.
Or from the revelation given through Brother Joseph at Fishing River during the troubles in Missouri
Behold the destroyer I have sent forth to
destroy and lay waste mine enemies. And not
many years hence they shall not be left to pollute
mine heritage and to blaspheme my name
upon the lands which I have consecrated for
the gathering together of my Saints.
When he would bemoan having made a savage of himself by siding with the Indian horde I would remind him that our brown brothers are descended of the Twelve Tribes and are destined to rejoin the faithful so that we might rise up together in the final days. The revelation and prophecy on war became another favourite.
And it shall come to pass also that the remnants
who are left of the land will marshal
themselves and shall become exceedingly angry
and shall vex the Gentiles with a sore vexation.
Dorrie you see how I relied upon that which has been written but neither was I shy to invoke words I had heard spoken aloud. While Mr. Burr twisted in his sheets I bid him cast his mind back to the address Brother Haight delivered at Sunday Meeting in Cedar only days before the emigrants met their end. How he harrowed up feeling by recalling Haun’s Mill and all those who perished there. How he swore to feed the Gentiles the same bread they fed to us.
At length Mr. Burr came to know stretches of unbroken sleep. Sometimes for months on end. The thing lay dormant but did not die. It rose up in him when word got round that a schoolteacher in Cedar had been shot dead for asking too many questions about the fate of the train. He woke bellowing night after night. Then again during the winter flood of sixty-one when he imagined the unending rains to be proof of the Lord’s wrath. Remember wading out to the coop with me Dorrie? How the chickens squawked and splashed at least those that hadn’t been fool enough to drown. Remember how Mr. Burr kept his bed while we struggled rising only after the waters began to subside?
Through all of it I ministered to him. Did I believe what I was saying? Did any of it make a difference to what he had done? I did my best not to ask myself such questions. When my husband howled in our bed I did what I could to console him. We never spoke of it during daylight hours. After a time it only ever seemed true in the dark.
Still it troubled him that I knew. The plan was that the killing was to be laid entirely on the Indians. Those Saints present on the ground had been forbidden to speak of what happened. Even to their wives. Even among themselves. To do so would be counted treason against the Church a crime punishable by death. Here I counselled him too. Were not a man and his wife one flesh? Was it not my sworn duty to share his life’s burden? Was not a burden shared a burden halved?
I know now it is not. Not when that burden is knowledge of a great evil committed. I am become a vessel for his guilt. Look how I swell to contain it and still it will out.
Dorrie my hand fails me. I can write no more this night. From the next room come sounds of sobbing or love. I cannot say with certainty which.
All a mother’s love
Helen Burr