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She said that she was the ‘human fly’ and she lifted me from beneath,
By a section slight of my garb of night, which she held in her pearly teeth.”
This last line, which at home elicited sympathetic chuckles, here provoked rude laughter, but it pleased me that the fellows liked the song.
“Oh, for the sweet sake of the ‘human snake’ I’d have stood this conduct shady,
But she skipped at last with a gentleman friend who had starred as the bearded lady.
But oh, at night when my slumber’s light, regret cometh o’er me stealing.
Oh, where are those limbs that tied four-in-hand scarf? How I miss those steps on the ceiling.”
I ended to enthusiastic applause.
“Hwaurr! I know what I’d do with a human snake,” said one of the clowns, to gales of laughter. “Introduce her to another snake.”
“Ugh! I’d as soon touch a woman like that as touch a … well, a … I don’t know, something foul,” said a young acrobat.
“I think she’s a contortionist,” I said gently. “Not a real snake woman.” I was sorry I had upset the lad.
“That’s still not a lady, is it?” he said. “Taking on those … those positions.”
I would have explained that many folk wouldn’t consider the women who worked in the circus ladies either, even though, by all evidence, they were pure young women, but salacious laughter drowned me out, and suggestions of which positions a snake woman could take.
“I don’t think you’re a good influence on these gentlemen, Abel Dandy,” proclaimed the senior acrobat, who hadn’t joined the singing. “You’ve aroused unhealthy thoughts. Nothing good can come of such thoughts. They destroy a man’s health. They sap his strength.”
“I’d like my strength sapped,” groaned the vulgar clown. “Even a freak would do me.”
“If the roustabouts don’t beat it to death first,” said someone else.
My jaw dropped at their words.
“Get to bed, the lot of you,” the acrobat said, “or I’ll report you to Geoffrey Marvel.” That shut everyone up. “If this happens again, I will. The Marvel brothers don’t employ those with unclean habits, and they don’t tolerate those who advocate unnatural acts.” Those last words were aimed straight at me, and they stung. “You, sir”—he pointed at the vulgar clown—“what would your mother think of your debased suggestion?”
The young men slid embarrassed glances at one another, and the clown lowered his eyes.
We all climbed into our bunks. Some of the fellows gave me dirty looks. “Freak lover,” the clown hissed.
I had simply wanted to sing a funny song, and now they considered me a scoundrel. I hadn’t thought the song rude, and what was wrong with a little amorous adventure, anyway? I tossed and turned. Were the dreams I’d had recently merely unhealthy thoughts? Did that make me a bad person? I hated the smell of close-packed, sweaty boys and the harsh sheets. I missed my own bed and my friends. I wanted to quit; I couldn’t, though. I would look a fool if I ran home with my tail between my legs. When I returned home, it should be with money in my pocket and a career well on the way. I clutched the ring at my neck. Be my good-luck charm, I begged.
I stood in a garden of exotic blooms and clambering vines. The air hummed, and in the distance tiny cymbals chinged. A rustle behind me sent shivers down my back, and I caught the scent of flowers and spices I couldn’t name. I was drenched with the awareness of the one I knew and didn’t know. Every mote of me recognized that presence and cried out to it.
I turned to see a shadowy figure just beyond the moon-light—a curvaceous form with flowing hair. “Come to me,” whispered a voice that sounded as cracked as old parchment yet hot as the desert sun, and an unbearable arrow of pleasure and pain shot through me from groin to heart.
I awoke in the night, rigid with desire, and too afraid to relieve myself lest someone hear.
The nighttime stories and songs didn’t stop, but I was never asked to participate again, and I didn’t try. Perhaps they were right about me. Perhaps I was dissolute and I hadn’t known it. Who cares? I decided. I didn’t want to give up those dreams. In fact, I spent considerable time imagining the end of the last one. I am reaping my reward from years of diligent novel reading, I told myself.
The senior acrobat redirected the young men’s taste for the sensational from womanly charms to the safer thrills of ghost stories and tales of train wrecks and, best of all, circus-train wrecks that resulted in haunted tracks. Everyone had a “friend of a friend told me” story on that topic. If you believed them all, there wasn’t a stretch of rail from New York to California that didn’t have phantom elephants trumpeting late at night.
One night the tales featured “wereanimals”—men possessed by the souls of circus beasts. I shivered as I imagined the panther man with icy eyes stalking the fellow who had caused his family’s death by fire.
“I reckon that’s what that escaped monkey is,” said a juggler. “No one’s seen it right good. It’s a demon monkey.”
At that moment the train chose to shudder and grind to a halt.
A split second of pregnant fear froze us, and then one of the clowns laughed—the one I always thought of as the vulgar clown since the night of my controversial song. “Look at Abel’s face.” He had never lost a chance to taunt me since that night.
